Nanocomputer

Nanocomputer refers to a computer smaller than the microcomputer, which is smaller than the minicomputer.

Microelectronic components that are at the core of all modern electronic devices employ semiconductor transistors. The term nanocomputer is increasingly used to refer to general computing devices of size comparable to a credit card.

Future computers smaller than 10 nanometers

Die shrink has been more or less continuous since around 1970. A few years later, the 6 µm process allowed the making of desktop computers, known as microcomputers. Moore's Law in the next 40 years brought features 1/100th the size, or ten thousand times as many transistors per square millimeter, putting smartphones in every pocket. Eventually computers will be developed with fundamental parts that are no bigger than a few nanometers.

There are several ways nanocomputers might be built, using mechanical, electronic, biochemical, or quantum technology. Consensus among hardware developers has been that is unlikely that nanocomputers will be made out of semiconductor transistors, as they seem to perform significantly less well when shrunk to sizes under 100 nanometers. Although developers have reduced microprocessors to 22 nm as of April 2012. Moreover, Intel's 5 nanometer technology outlook predicts 5 nm feature size by 2022. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors gives an industrial consensus on feature scaling following Moore's Law.

A Silicon-Silicon bond length is 235.2 pm, which means that a 5 nm-width transistor would be 21 silicon atoms wide.

See also

• Nanotechnology
• Starseed launcher - Interstellar nanoprobes proposal
• List of fictional computers in the 1980s - Low Energy Variable Input Nanocomputer (LEVIN) from William T Quick's novels Dreams of Gods and Men, and Singularities. (1989)
• Quantum computer

External links

• A spray-on computer is way to do IT
• Future Nanocomputer Technologies - Diagram of possible technologies (electronic, organic, mechanical, quantum).