Chip the way for world's first programmable nanoprocessor

Here’s a finally a computer chip that is thousands times emaciated than a single strand of a human hair. A motley group of engineers and scientists including Charles Lieber of Harvard University have ameliorated a prototype of world’s first programmable nanoprocessor. Based on a grid of nanowires, it contains around 500 of nanowires clubbed with normal metal wires in a 1mm-square area. This tiled architecture of the nanowires not only can fill an area of one-eighth of the conventional chip but can also be re-programmed to do a number of mathematical and logical functions.

programmable nanoprocessor

Now besides functionality, this also marks and adds a new dimension to the manufacturing methods employed in making current chips that are subjected to mount to a particular level of size, below which it cannot be squeezed further. Thus these nanoprocessor circuits are touted to be 10 times more efficacious as they are less exposed to the threat of proliferation of electrical current than the existing transistors.

This research was supported by National Nanotechnology Initiative, MITRE Innovation Program along with Department of Defense National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship and is considered as building-blocks for a new category of compact consumer electronics and gadgets in coming times.

Via: Science Daily