HP Propose Alternative to Transistors[/b]
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2005/feb/01/020106536.html

excerpts:

Challenging a basic tenet of the semiconductor industry, researchers at Hewlett-Packard Co. have demonstrated a technology that could replace the transistor as the fundamental building block of all computers.

The devices, called crossbar latches, could be made so small that thousands of them could fit across the diameter of a human hair, enabling the high-tech industry to continue to build ever-smaller computing devices that are less expensive than their predecessors.

The smallest features of today's silicon-based transistors are about 90 nanometers long, a nanometer being roughly one hundred-thousandth the width of a human hair. The crossbar latch, by comparison, can work in a space of about 2 to 3 nanometers.

The HP research, reported in Tuesday's Journal of Applied Physics, scraps the transistor entirely. In its place is basically a series of platinum wires crossed opposite directions. At the junctions are molecules that in the HP research happen to be steric acid.

The crossbar latch not only works at a much smaller scale than a transistor but also can do more, he added.

Moore's Law!

Sweet!

Waay cool..but is it more expensive to construct?