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To: Feathered Propeller who wrote (19167)	7/15/1999 7:49:00 PM
From: Moonray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22053

Crystal Computer Chip Uses Chemistry for Speed Reuters - July 15 WASHINGTON - Computer experts said on Thursday they had taken a big step toward making tiny, super-fast computers known as molecular computers. Built on a crystalline structure, such computers will someday replace those based on silicon chips and could ultimately make it possible to have a computer so small it could be woven into clothing, they predicted. They will need far less power than current computers and may be able to hold vast amounts of data permanently, doing away with the need to erase files, and perhaps also be immune to computer viruses, crashes and other glitches. ''You can potentially do approximately 100 billion times better than a current Pentium (chip) in terms of energy required to do a calculation,'' James Heath, a chemistry professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), said in a statement. ''We can potentially get the computational power of 100 workstations on the size of a grain of sand.'' The team at UCLA and at Hewlett-Packard created a molecular ''logic gate,'' which forms the basis of how a computer works. ''We have actually built the very simplest gates used in computers -- logic gates -- and they work,'' Phil Kuekes, a computer architect at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, said in a telephone interview. Logic gates switch between ''on'' and ''off'' positions, creating the changes in electrical voltage that represent ''bits'' of information. Heath's team did this by creating a new compound, called rotaxane, which grows in a crystalline structure. Writing in the journal Science, Heath's and Kuekes' teams said the rotaxane molecules, sandwiched between metal electrodes, functioned as logic gates. Computers are now based on silicon chips. The information they carry is etched onto them, and it is becoming harder and harder to do this precisely on ever-smaller chips. But a crystal can absorb information, in the form of an electrical charge, and organize it more efficiently. The ''chips'' made using this molecular technology could be as small as a grain of dust, Kuekes said. ''When you walk into a room, it will turn the TV to your favorite channel. Or instead of getting carpal tunnel syndrome pushing a mouse around, your finger becomes the mouse,'' he said. The next step will be structuring the chip. Instead of etching this structure onto the surface, as is done now with silicon chips, it will be downloaded electrically. ''We can download all the complexity, by wire, attached to a bigger computer,'' Kuekes said. But currently available wires are too big -- much bigger than the rotaxane molecules -- to do this. ''So the next step is going to be to shrink the wires until they are the same diameter as the molecules, and then we will have the miniaturized technology,'' he said. It might be possible to use carbon nanotubes -- long thin tubes made of pure carbon. Also known as ''Bucky tubes,'' they are no thicker than most molecules. Last year the same team announced they had made the largest ''defect tolerant'' computer ever and named it the Teramac. Shares of Hewlett-Packard surged Thursday $4.56 to close at $113 in composite U.S. stock market trading, even as rival computer makers saw share price declines. o~~~ O