Reply With QuoteWe are all going to die when the machines take over.
Physicists Create a Working Transistor From a Single Atom
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/sc...ngle-atom.htmlAustralian and American physicists have built a working transistor from a single phosphorus atom embedded in a silicon crystal.
The group of physicists, based at the University of New South Wales and Purdue University, said they had laid the groundwork for a futuristic quantum computer that might one day function in a nanoscale world and would be orders of magnitude smaller and quicker than today’s silicon-based machines.
In contrast to conventional computers that are based on transistors with distinct “on” and “off” or “1” and “0” states, quantum computers are built from devices called qubits that exploit the quirky properties of quantum mechanics. Unlike a transistor, a qubit can represent a multiplicity of values simultaneously.
That might make it possible to factor large numbers more quickly than with conventional machines, thereby undermining modern data-scrambling systems that are the basis of electronic commerce and data privacy. Quantum computers might also make it possible to simulate molecular structures with great speed, an advance that holds promise for designing new drugs and other materials.
We are all going to die when the machines take over.
Creating a machine which can think on it's own is beyond our capability....at least for the time being.Originally Posted by Breakfast in Vegas
So do I have to buy a new computer soon again?
not so soon...
What's interesting to me is where this could go. Most people imagine a smart computer in a room at a university, research lab, or military facility. Personally I think they better have it physically isolated lest it "escape" onto the web. Would it be possible for the web to be used as a single distributed system? Imagine an entity with a presence in every connected computer, machine, camera, microphone, in the world.
When I worked for Weyerhaeuser my boss was a computer. It was the nicest boss I ever had. I really miss ol' Dell.
Good text.
I find this very intresting
Scientists have taken a first early step toward escaping the limits of a technological principle called Moore's Law by creating a working transistor using a single phosphorus atom.......
Moore's law states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months to two years, and it's predicted to reach its limit with existing technology in 2020. Cutting the size of a transistor to a single atom may defeat that concept.
"We really decided 10 years ago to start this program to try and make single-atom devices as fast as we could, and beat that law," said Michelle Simmons, director of ARC Center for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of New South Wales, Australia. "So here we are in 2012, and we've made a single-atom transistor roughly 8 to 10 years ahead of where the industry is going to be."
It may take those 8-10 years just to actually grow some working "300 millions transistors per chip" device.
That's really good news. I remember Michio Kaku predicting economic consequences if this happens:
"Moore's law states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months to two years, and it's predicted to reach its limit with existing technology in 2020."
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