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What perplexes me is that neither Intel, AMD, IBM, or any other company, as far as I can tell, is pursuing the bootstrapping path of self-assembling nanotech. O
by lachlan-sneff 7y ago
What perplexes me is that neither Intel, AMD, IBM, or any other company, as far as I can tell, is pursuing the bootstrapping path of self-assembling nanotech. Once someone does it, every other company is going to be left several orders of magnitude in the dust, so it surprises me that no one is going for it.
- ttsda 7y agoYeah, I wonder why all these companies are investing billions on chip fabrication if they can just tell the tiny robots to build them
- lachlan-sneff 7y agoWell, you can laugh, but it's legitimate stuff. Right now, all we have is self-assembling dna structures, but there's a bootstrappable path towards "tiny robots".
- ttsda 7y agoWe have self-assembling dna structures, which we don't even fully understand and which are the result of millions of years of evolution. The steps are being made towards such tiny robots, but it's preposterous to mention them as a viable alternative to the current chip fab strategy.
- fooker 7y agoNo, gate sizes even one order of magnitude smaller is going to be infeasible for 'electron'-ics.
- lachlan-sneff 7y ago"*nm" gates is just marketing speak. The transistors are actually still many 10s to 100s of nanometers across. Actual nanotech will allow for gates that are legitimately just a few nanometers across.
- luc4sdreyer 7y agoHave you considered that self-assembling nanotech might be much, much harder than it seems? Or do you know something we don't?
- lachlan-sneff 7y agoOh no, it is extremely complex. However, every step along the path towards it provides benefits and, slowly but surely, researchers are moving forward. I think the field just needs more funding and more scientists dedicated towards it.
- luc4sdreyer 7y agoThat's fair. Deciding how much to spend on R&D and what to prioritise is a hard problem.
- bloopernova 7y agoI believe that the nanobots required to perform such a feat are at least several decades away, if not further. You're essentially trying to replicate what cells do in a growing embryo, and even with several billion years of evolution that is still a very very error-prone process.
- lachlan-sneff 7y agoYou're right about the self-replicating part, that's probably very far away (and not necessary for this). But I think self-assembling nano-mechanisms are closer. We can already sort of do it with self-assembling dna mechanisms and, theoretically, those can bootstrap into more complex tech made out of better materials