Make special logic units, maybe they're even mini-cpus, that are the size of a single grain of sugar with communication connections on each surface facet. Pour 1000's into a sugarcube sized mould and perform a sintering process to glom the whole thing into an aggregate, interconnected meta CPU. Programming details and usefulness to be determined.

Oh, and its made out of silicon so it shouldn't dissolve. Well, unless you put it into a hot cup of coffee and stir vigorously.
-- GeneticCrypto, Sep 19 2000

slashdot on holographic storage http://slashdot.org.../06/26/228244.shtml
Not much to do with the idea, but since you ask... [jutta, Sep 19 2000]

Scientific American Link http://www.sciam.co...e/0500toigbox5.html
Ditto jutta, but since sugarcube cpus need storage... [GeneticCrypto, Sep 19 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004]

Another Scientific American Link http://www.sciam.co...issue/0500toig.html
ditto my ditto [GeneticCrypto, Sep 19 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004]

Shuffling individual molecules http://www.aip.org/.../split/pnu503-2.htm
Okay, so I stole it from Slashdot, but this is another step closer to the nano-computer idea. Of course, at -253 C, coffee is out of the question. [centauri, Sep 19 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004]

(?) Sluggy Freelance: Nanites http://sluggy.com/d/000118.html
(The strip referenced by [ironfroggy]. Just don't ask me for a backgrounder.) [jutta, Sep 19 2000]

Maybe you can design it so that it gets its power from external heat sources, say a nice hot cup of tea.

How many of these little guys would I need to process Arecibo SETI data in realtime?
-- centauri, Sep 19 2000


IBM has developed a storage technology that they say can store a terrabyte in a device the size of a sugarcube - lost the link in a computer crash, but I think it was in 32bitsOnline.

It was also, as I recall now, a terrabyte on a drive the size of a dime...
-- Scott_D, Sep 19 2000, last modified Sep 28 2000


Holographic storage? They used to talk about that as being the next big thing, but not much has been said in the past few years. Scientific American had a long article on it sometime in the past year or two.
-- GeneticCrypto, Sep 19 2000


No, I think it was actually mechanical, tiny pits in the surface of some sort of plastic, read with a tiny little tonearm, or something.
-- Scott_D, Sep 19 2000


I have read about that too. It is basically a specialized scanning tunneling microscope. Just imagine bit manipulation at the atom(ic) level.
-- GeneticCrypto, Sep 20 2000


at some motor functions (like the communications facets being able to expand and contract the space between cubes) and you've got yourself some nanties like in sluggy freelance! (http://www.sluggy.com)
-- ironfroggy, Sep 27 2000


As an independant study-type-thing in the next year I have actually set myself to designing something remarkably resembling this idea. Of course, the connections would have to be more deliberate, but the general idea is similar. I'll post more as I actually begin work (should be this summer). I might even put up a link to any VHDL code I might write.... we'll see.
-- badoingdoing, Dec 27 2000


People have long wanted to take advantage of the third dimesion to make circuitry. The problem with this solution is that it presents no solution at all! How would the grains be made? Are they 3D themselves or only 2D? If they're 3D, you've not explained how they are fabricated which is the most important part.

If the grains are just regular 2D lithographed chips, then this device is worse than a regular IC. It requires a massive amount of interconnects. Interconnect pads are really big compared to transisters. They're thousands of times larger than a transistor. And there's no point to using such small grains anyway since fabrication technology easily allows for ~100mm^2 size chips.
-- zephyr_prime, Jan 12 2002



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