REALLY FAST
If people think computers are efficient now, will they be ready in the future for computers that perhaps make use of a processor 100 billion times more powerful than a present-day Pentium chip?
An announcement on July 15, 1999 told of the accomplishment by scientists of a "logic gate" on a molecular level. Made on a crystalline structure, molecular computers will someday be portable indeed, perhaps even usable as part or parts of clothing, and will require less power to operate than do present systems. Such vast amounts of data will be able to be stored on them that erasing files will become entirely unnecessary--except for those with something to hide.
In a phone interview, Phil Kuekes, a Hewlett-Packard computer architect, spoke of how two teams working together built extremely simple working logic gates. James Heath, a chemistry professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, heads one of these teams. The other team is at the Palo Alto-based Hewlett Packard Company.
The latter team compounded rotaxane, which, as stated, grows in a crystalline structure. The molecules of rotaxane, in between metal electrodes, work as the aforementioned logic gates. The journal Science reported their development, likely to eventually replace silicon chips.
There are even mightier computers in the offing. Recent experiments which successfully teleported photons may well lead to computers in the future which will be powerful beyond present conceptions.
Source: The Washington Post, 7/16/99