Hewlett Finds a Process to Make Chips Even Smaller
By John Markoff
September 10, 2002

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs have developed a manufacturing process capable of producing molecular-scale circuits vastly denser than today's most advanced semiconductor chips.

Those wild sci-fi dreams of transforming matter or stealth assasination may not be fulfilled any time soon, but a more plausible application of nanotechnology may be just 5 years away: microscopic computing. HP unveiled a manufacturing process to build molecule sized circuits; a chip smaller than your fingernail could hold your whole MP3 library and your DVD library, too.

The Hewlett-Packard researchers said they had been making working circuits for almost a year, but chose to make the announcement now because they received a crucial patent in the field last month. The patent was granted for work done by Yong Chen, a senior Hewlett-Packard scientist who conceived of the new manufacturing approach. Scientists and industry executives said that the technology had made startling strides in the last two years. Earlier this year, I.B.M. said it would be possible to commercialize later this decade a disklike storage technology named Millipede capable of storing trillions of bits of data per square inch.

Couple these tiny workhorses with electronic fabrics and the concept of "wearable computers" makes a lot more sense now. It's Moore's law all over again, in high style.

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