I've read about this a few months ago. The idea is to make DNA attach to the material, then remove the DNA once it is formed. The process is supposed to be cost effective and better all-around. The article mentioned manufacturing to approximately the 7-9nm level. Hopefully they can make this work sooner rather than later.*crosses fingers*

The hydrogen bonds holding two strands of DNA together break at low temperatures, around 55 degrees Celsius. I don't know how strong the individual strands are, but I wouldn't want my CPU to denature when I run Prime95.

The DNA is removed after forming the desired product. Hence think of the DNA as a mold.

If they used Chuck Norris' DNA the chip would remove the nanotubes and just use the DNA.

That's interesting. I wonder that is the TDP going to be.

Will it cause your CPU to have cancer after extensive usage?

Skynet?

while I don't doubt IBM's find, I don't see this happening ANY time soon say at least 10 years off. I worked with carbon nano-tubes in academia and our current manufacturing and manipulation techniques are far too unpredictable to build something like a CPU out of C-nanotubes. I'm not saying that using DNA scaffolding won't work, I'm saying merely getting the raw materials (C-nanotubes) in such a way as to be efficient and cost effective enough to put to market is impossible at this stage, and while this will change rapidly it takes time for technology to mature to a point to be marketable.

while I don't doubt IBM's find, I don't see this happening ANY time soon say at least 10 years off. I worked with carbon nano-tubes in academia and our current manufacturing and manipulation techniques are far too unpredictable to build something like a CPU out of C-nanotubes. I'm not saying that using DNA scaffolding won't work, I'm saying merely getting the raw materials (C-nanotubes) in such a way as to be efficient and cost effective enough to put to market is impossible at this stage, and while this will change rapidly it takes time for technology to mature to a point to be marketable.

still using dna to make cpu's is a novel concept. it would make the process more environmentally friendly too.

Next-gen self-replicating, self-improving and self-aware CPUs are comming! Welcome to the Terminator future!

This must be stopped, in the future the very first batch of dna molded processors will develop self awareness and enslave mankind....
I am John Connor and if you are reading this, you are the resistance.

Very interesting.

Too bad IBM doesn't make PPC processors for PCs anymore. Sure, the Macintosh PPC chips weren't all that great, but the tri core in the xbox 360 is awesome (though not a x86 chio).

I'm hoping IBM is succesful myself

Skip the middleman and make a DNA or RNA cpu (no cpu has matched the human brain as of yet)

well i guess if they want to make a value cpu then they could use the DNA of George Bush or Sarah Palin or would the CPU still be too slow?

This reminds me of the Graphene processor technology that was under research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

They've made transistors out of Graphene that are like 2 atoms by 8 atoms in size, IIRC, and the technology can produce processors 500-1000GHz in speed.

DNA or Graphene, it seems like there is going to be a shift away from Silicon (which is hitting its limits), and a move to new processes to build ridiculously tiny transistors out of carbon instead (graphene is also made of carbon atoms).

That would be cool to see someday, AMD or Intel or some new company hitting the 1Thz mark first. (terahertz)?

Man this stuff is just crazy and exciting.

To those of you who are as old as I am or older, think about the changes we have gone through and how amazing the time is that we live in.

My first computer was an Atari, the first computer I ever made my own games on was an Atari 800 XL, and from these machines we went on to Atari ST, STE, STF, and on to the first PC-8086, 286, 386, 486 Pentium 90 etc.

We have seen the birth of the modern day pc and are now talking about Gigahertz and Terabytes as everyday things... I remember the days where we never thought we'd fill our Atari's 1 MB of harddisk space.

The days where we thought a few KiloBytes of RAM in the PC was insane...

We live in exciting times people...

@Thurin

"We live in exciting times people..."

I disagree... I was a LOT more excited back then, when IMPORTANT and expensive improvements occured every couple of years than now where almost unnoticeable and cheap improvements occure every 6 months.

I mean, moving from 386SX to 486DX4 was a HELL of an improvement!

i think of it like the motor industry, where the interresting stuff like power and torque are left behind to the profit of environmentalism. BORING! And it has even got to computers! ASUS includes some sort of energy saving software with their mobo, and it doesn't tell me how much I've saved in kw or in $$, no, it measures CARBON!!! Man it's so boring, we've got hydroelectricity here, and even if we had coal power plants, I would find this B O R I N G! Like that cell phone that measures how much carbon i've saved by walking rather than taking my car.

Huh, I'm getting carried away I think

But this article technology is interresting. But how do you call it? vaporware? I read the same kind of news a couple of years ago about QUANTUM processors that were supposedly many many times faster than classic processor. I'Ve also read about organic processor.

push them to the market dammit so we can do better than masturbate to them!!!

I have about every tech, PC or science mag bloating up my mail box to the point where my Mail carrier hates me I have heard about DNC processors 10 years ago and Quantium processors 5 years ago even heard of a PC that can mod its own microcode and could think and reason at a 4th grade level but what am I playing games on? a stinky Intel 965 Proc where are the nero-scan interfaces and the fullly interactive displays we were promissed years ago?