Roughly every 18 months transistors get smaller but at the same time also increase in processing power. It was Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore in particular who predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors that can fit on a processor would roughly double every two years or so. Today this growth occurs every 18 months. But this exponential growth is not indefinite; there will be a time when the laws of quantum physics prevent any further shrinkage using conventional methods. And this is where atomic-scale computing comes into play with an essentially different solution to the problem.

“Nanotechnology is about taking something and shrinking it to its smallest possible scale. It’s a top-down approach,” says Christian Joachim of the (CNRS).

Using devices such as the scanning-tunnelling microscopes and atomic-force microscopes both devices which can measure and move individual atoms Joachim’s team has managed to design a simple logic gate with 30 atoms that perform the same task as 14 transistors. More?