Stanford engineers create carbon nanotube computer

"People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics moving beyond silicon," said Professor Subhasish Mitra, an electrical engineer and computer scientist at Stanford. "But there have been few demonstrations of complete digital systems using this exciting technology. Here is the proof." The Stanford researchers used an imperfection-immune design to assemble a basic computer with 178 transistors. In tests, the device was able to perform tasks such as counting and number sorting. It was also capable of running a basic operating system to swap between these processes, and could even run MIPS. Though it could take years to mature, the scientists believe the approach points toward the possibility of industrial scale production of carbon nanotube semiconductors. "There is no question that this will get the attention of researchers in the semiconductor community and entice them to explore how this technology can lead to smaller, more energy efficient processors in the next decade," Prof Mitra concluded.