Carbon nanotube computer

摘要

本期封面所示为一台碳纳米管电脑的一部分的扫描电子显微图。碳纳米管早就被认为是制造基于碳而非不是硅的电脑的有希望的元件。实现这一目标的一个主要动机是,采用碳纳米管晶体管的电路具有实现高能效的潜力。各种不同的碳纳米管电路元件以前曾演示过,但Max Shulaker等人现在在碳电子和纳米电子领域实现了一个真正的里程碑：他们全部用碳纳米管晶体管做出了一台虽然简单、但却能发挥功能的电脑。这台电脑由178个晶体管组成,每个含有10到200个碳纳米管。它运行一个简单的操作系统,能处理多项任务：它执行四项任务(归纳为指令提取、数据提取、算术运算和回写）,能同时运行两个不同程序。%The miniaturization of electronic devices has been the principal driving force behind the semiconductor industry, and has brought about major improvements in computational power and energy efficiency. Although advances with silicon-based electronics continue to be made, alternative technologies are being explored. Digital circuits based on transistors fabricated from carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have the potential to outperform silicon by improving the energy-delay product, a metric of energy efficiency, by more than an order of magnitude. Hence, CNTs are an exciting complement to existing semiconductor technologies. Owing to substantial fundamental imperfections inherent in CNTs, however, only very basic circuit blocks have been demonstrated. Here we show how these imperfections can be overcome, and demonstrate the first computer built entirely using CNT-based transistors. The CNT computer runs an operating system that is capable of multitasking: as a demonstration, we perform counting and integer-sorting simultaneously. In addition, we implement 20 different instructions from the commercial MIPS instruction set to demonstrate the generality of our CNT computer. This experimental demonstration is the most complex carbon-based electronic system yet realized. It is a considerable advance because CNTs are prominent among a variety of emerging technologies that are being considered for the next generation of highly energy-efficient electronic systems.