The next tech revolution

he technology industry is on the verge of a revolution in which physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science will converge to create computers the size of atoms and tiny mechanical devices on a molecular scale. Disciplines emerging from this revolution, such as nanotechnology and quantum computing, promise unlimited computing power.

"We will be able to pack more computational power into a device the size of a sugar cube than is available in the world now," says Ralph Merkle, a research scientist at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), in Palo Alto, Calif.

"I think that in the not-so-distant future, maybe by 2020, definitely by 2050, we will have devices with the computational power of [10-to-the-24th power] logic operations per second -- roughly a billion Pentium computers," Merkle asserts.

Changes brought about by these technologies could be so vast that they will dwarf the changes brought about by mainframes, minicomputers, and personal computers.

INTELLIGENT MATTER. Although the Information Age until now has brought about the widespread connection and manipulation of data, the next 10 years will see the beginnings of the manipulation of individual atoms, the creation of intelligent matter, and tiny, self-replicating machines.

"I believe that we are in a similar phase now with nanotechnology and quantum computing as we were in the 1960s with the personal-computer industry," says Deepak Srivastava, senior research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, Calif. "The basic building blocks and materials have been recognized."

Further into the future, an industry will emerge whereby atomic computing devices may be embedded in everything. Rather than having a PC sit on a desk, the desk itself may be the computer; car tires may compute speed and brake power; and doctors may inject tiny robots into the human bloodstream in order to eliminate a tumor.

Fortunately this era will occur long after the year-2000 problem has been solved. Although now it's science fiction, most experts say they believe that by the year 2020, advances in these areas will be well underway.

In fact, the advances in the past five years have been staggering. For example, IBM has prototyped a crude quantum computer, and NASA has simulated the viability of a transistor based on a carbon nanotube (a tiny, hollow tube of carbon atoms).

SMART AS A SLUG. Companies such as IBM, Motorola, Xerox, Lucent, and even Sun Microsystems already are researching the possibilities of nanotechnology.

Likewise, universities and government research facilities such as the University of California at Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and NASA also are actively conducting research into these areas.

But much of the innovation is taking place on the fringes of the sciences. So, companies such as IBM and Lucent have invested in research centers that cross the lines of physics, chemistry, and biology and try to apply that knowledge to computer science.

For example, there is a growing recognition that even the most primitive biological organisms are more sophisticated than the most advanced supercomputers because of their capability to learn, store, and transfer information as well as self replicate.

Alan Gelperin, a scientist who has spent the past 15 years studying the behavior of slugs, now works at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs, in Murray Hill, N.J.

"A slug has a very simple nervous system," says Cherry Murray, director of Bell Labs' Physical Research Laboratory, where Gelperin works.

"The slug's nervous system has a calcium signal wave that pulses constantly. When the slug is stimulated the wave is altered. This is an intelligent network," Murray states. "If we can find out how a biological organism stores information, then what would that mean for computer science?"

Technology companies and research institutions are looking to these areas because of doubts that Moore's Law, which dictates that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months, will hold indefinitely. At the present rate of change, by 2012 a transistor will be about three atoms thick, Murray says.

"Moore's Law really runs out of steam, in the conventional sense, in 2012," Murray says. "Once we start working with devices the size of atoms we get into the laws of quantum mechanics."

Luckily for Murray, Bell Labs also houses some of the world's foremost experts in quantum computing.

QUANTUM LEAP. The science of quantum computing surpasses the limits of conventional computers by simultaneously carrying out many calculations within a single piece of hardware. And, instead of using electronic bits, quantum computers use quantum mechanical bits, or "qubits."

For many years people knew that it was possible to build a quantum computer, but it was not until Peter Shor at AT&T Labs, in Florham Park, N.J., devised a factorization algorithm that quantum computing had its first significant application.

Although conventional computers are good at multiplying numbers, they are not good at performing the reverse of that process: factorization. Factorization is a difficult task because of the number of combinations that have to be worked out before coming up with an answer. But with a quantum computer, many combinations may be tested simultaneously, greatly shortening the time to find an answer.

The difficulty of factorization using conventional computers is the principle that many modern computer-encryption techniques are based on. But when quantum computers arrive, their ability to carry out factorization will render useless the most sophisticated encryption algorithms.

Lov Grover, Bell Labs research scientist, invented in 1996 a second important use for quantum computing: searching databases. Grover's algorithm could be used for a number of applications, including statistical analysis.

However, it is difficult to build quantum computers, according to Nabil Amer, a research scientist at IBM's Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, Calif.

Part of the problem is that quantum particles must be isolated because their environment modifies them -- a principle known as "quantum entanglement."

For Amer, this presents an opportunity. Because environment alters a quantum bit, looking at one alters its state, thus opening possibilities for new, quantum encryption techniques.

"If there is an eavesdropper, the state is immediately altered, and the sender knows that it's been tampered with, so it's absolutely foolproof," Amer says.

Although widespread production of quantum computers surely is a long way off, special-purpose or hybrid quantum computing devices may be nearer than we think.

Both IBM and England's Oxford University already are working on quantum encryption techniques.

RAPID PROGRESS. Similarly, progress in nanotechnology is occurring at an alarming rate.

According to Merkle, nanotechnology -- also known as molecular manufacturing -- is the design, modeling, and manufacture of systems that can inexpensively fabricate products specified in atomic detail.

This would include, for example, molecular logic elements connected in complex patterns to form molecular computers.

Chemists already have been carrying out a form of nanotechnology with a scanning probe microscope, which enables the precise placement of atoms. But this process is very slow because each atom must be individually placed.

What is needed is a device that could easily and quickly build nanotechnology devices or materials. Dubbed an "assembler" by nanotechnologists, such a device could manufacture materials or arbitrary structures with atomic precision.

Zyvex, the world's first nanotechnology start-up, in Richardson, Texas, is attempting to build an assembler. The company was founded 1995 by Jim Von Ehr, founder and CEO of Altsys, which he sold to Macromedia in 1995.

"Once you manage to build one device," Von Ehr says, "you can instruct it to self replicate, or copy itself, and that is where nanotechnology begins to have widespread economic advantages."

One of the basic building blocks of nanotechnology devices are carbon nanotubes, hollow tubes of carbon atoms, which Sumio Iijma, an NEC scientist in Tokyo, discovered in 1991. Carbon nanotubes have a diameter of approximately 1/10,000 of a human hair, are capable of carrying a very high current, and are very strong.

"With carbon nanotubes, the flow of electricity can be ballistic, meaning that it can flow without collision," says Phaedon Avouris, a research scientist at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. "We believe that they can be used as field-effect transistors or on/off switches in computing devices."

However, Avouris says he believes that carbon nanotubes will be used with silicon in hybrid devices.

"I really don't expect the industry to drop silicon," Avouris says. "But for molecular electronics, carbon nanotubes look like the most promising new technology."

At NASA's Ames Research Center, Srivastava is now researching other possible uses for carbon nanotubes.

"Here we have a material that is stronger than steel," Srivastava says. "If you can fill them in a controlled way with hydrogen, then it is possible we could have a new method of fueling rockets in the next century."

This is, of course, rocket science. Although widespread production of nanotechnology devices and quantum computers is a long way off, it is safe to assume that many industries will get involved in their development. Notwithstanding a global economic collapse, these technologies should be well on their way to production by the year 2010.

Niall McKay (niall@wired.com) is a former senior editor at InfoWorld and now writes for Wired News.