Scientists have created a transistor made up of a single molecule. Surrounded by just 12 atoms, it is likely to be the smallest possible size for a transistor – and the hard limit for Moore's law.
The transistor is made of a single molecule of phthalocyanine surrounded by ring of 12 positively charged indium atoms placed on an indium arsenide crystal, as revealed in the scientific journal Nature Physics.
The work proves that precise control of atoms to create a transistor smaller than any other quantum system available is possible and opens the door to further research into harnessing these tiny transistors for computers and systems with orders of magnitude more processing power than today's machines.
From The Guardian
The original article from Nature
(Score: 5, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Thursday July 23 2015, @06:25PM
I do run on supercomputers. The overriding problem with supercomputer progress is that communication latency has not improved in at least 10 years (~ 1us). This doesn't hurt DFT calculations so much, as they are very dense and pegged to LINPACK which gets optimization. The latency does limit the biophysical calculations that need to solve multi-dimensional FFT's reflecting physical charge distribution, as these calculations are iterative.
A case-study of the gap behind "general purpose" supercomputing, and addressing a specific problem look for "Anton D.E.Shaw" , which is a machine built in 2007 for molecular dynamics calculations. It remains 2 orders of magnitude faster than any supercomputer on the top500.
We have only scratched the surface on what is achievable by computational science. Further advances in experimentation are going to require greater use of computational models to screen for better molecules.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GeriatricGentleman on Friday July 24 2015, @02:09AM
thank you
Nice article choice and some comments that make me feel dumber (why don't I know stuff like this?) and smarter (am grateful for the chance to learn a little!)
This is the kind of thing I show my 10yr old when she asks what I am doing when I goof off on the computer.
Now, as usual in this situation, I need some time to dive down the internet rabbit hole chasing links - starting with some digestible info on quantum chemistry...as you were