Computer giant IBM and the California Institute of Technology recently announced a breakthrough in microchip design that could result in a whole new generation of super-small, super-fast and super-smart computers. The breakthrough is based on studying how DNA folds itself, a form of organic “origami” that will allow chipmakers to pack even more transistors onto a single chip that is possible by current methods.
Currently, computer chips are made by a lithography process similar to conventional printing that results in circuits as small as 22 nanometers across. (A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.) The new “DNA origami” method could result in circuits as small as just 6 nanometers, which will increase efficiency multi-fold.
Creating these new super-chips will require entirely new manufacturing methods that builds each chip literally one molecule at a time, meaning we probably will not see this new technology in the marketplace for at least a decade. However, IBM spokespeople insist they’ve already “cracked the code” of how to achieve the results they desire.
“It took a couple of years, but once you figure out how to do it, it’s easy,” IBM researcher Greg Wallraff stated in a recent interview.
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