Quantum Mirage wireless chips

[zrski]

Freaky, toekomst muziek maar wel erg leuk. Ik denk dat het nog een hele tijd duurt voordat deze technology daadwerkelijk toegepast kan worden, maar als het zo ver is, dan ben ik benieuwd naar "Doom XVI" ;D

 

 

 

Wireless Chips?

 

 

 

Descending even farther down the size scale, you may have heard of

"quantum mirages." And you may even have seen some of the striking

pictures (not illustrations) that show how a ring of atoms can act like

a cage to contain electrons.

 

[image - Quantum Mirage, from IBM -

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/almaden/media/image_mirage.html]

 

Yet you, like I, may not have really appreciated just why these

atomic-scale corrals have scientists seeing visions of sugarplums, and

of far denser and faster chips, dancing in their heads.

 

One answer, brought to our attention by reader Gerard Wenham from the

Sept. 3 PC Magazine

(http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,439132,00.asp), is that because of

the properties of ellipses, which always contains two "foci," any

vibration at one focus is redirected to the second focus with little

loss (think "Statuary Hall" in the U.S. Capital, where someone

whispering at one focus of the elliptical room can be overheard by

someone standing at the other focus -- early political espionage, I

suspect).

 

In a similar manner, innovative thinkers at IBM Research now believe

that this "wireless" transmission of information at the atomic level

(between two foci of an elliptical cage) might eventually enable them to

bypass the wires currently needed to carry signals within a chip! (Even

the tiniest wires are becoming too big in the face of Moore's Law's

shrinking of transistors.)

 

"With today's silicon chips, the tiny wires that carry information

between transistors must be separated, so they don't overheat and

short. As chips get smaller and faster, keeping the wires apart

becomes nearly impossible. With Quantum Mirage, chips can be

significantly smaller and denser, because the system can send data

without wires."

 

Which is a rather unique application of "wireless." And that is more

than a little cool.

 

Check out http://www.almaden.ibm.com/almaden/media/image_mirage.html for

additional pictures of quantum mirages, plus

 

http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/

pages/quantum100.html

 

and

 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF- 8&oe=UTF-8&q=quantum+mirage

 

for additional details.