Coming -- Programmable Matter

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April 26, 2004 (Computerworld) -- To really understand the future, you have to suspend disbelief and imagine for a moment that software isn't just code on a screen; it's also matter. It's physical—as real as the chair you are sitting in. And it's programmable.

Programmable matter. It's a world that researchers such as Richard Minn, an electrical engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, are building—one artificial atom at a time. An early beneficiary of this work could be information systems.

At a NIST lab in Boulder, Colo., Minn is using a quantum dot, also known as an artificial atom because of its capability to hold an electron in place. In this case, the electron is placed around a positively charged particle. They combine, annihilate each other and emit a photon, the smallest pulse of light.

It's a process that can be controlled to create a "photon on demand," or something akin to a binary on/off switch. This ability to control the release of photons could have applications in an area of computer security called quantum cryptography. The government is interested in it because the use of photons encoded in "quantum states" to communicate between a sender and receiver is "unconditionally secure." If there is any eavesdropping or interception of the message, the transmission will be altered, which ensures detection.

NIST, as well as researchers in corporate and academic labs, are working with atoms and subatomic particles, the building blocks of all matter, to develop quantum cryptography and other technologies.

In short, the software itself is the material structure: It is the configuration of the molecules, atoms and electrons. Change their fundamental properties, and the software is changed.

"In order to program at this level, you have to move the matter—there is just no way around it," says James C. Ellenbogen, senior principal scientist at Mitre Corp.'s Nanosystems Group in McLean, Va. For Ellenbogen, this is "matter as software."

Image Credit: Paul Howalt

Making something work at nanoscales pushes current technology to its limits and beyond. Chemists have long known how to synthesize chemicals at an atomic level, but combining chemicals alone doesn't make a computer.

"Our strategy has been to make some very simple chemical systems that self-assemble and then essentially electrically download complexity into those afterward," says Philip Keukes, a senior computing architect in quantum science at Hewlett-Packard Co.

HP has developed a nanoscale, molecular-based programmable device. To get an idea of what it looks like, imagine a sandwich. One layer is wiring that is approximately 40 nm across—a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter—going north and south. The peanut butter in this sandwich is a layer of chemically created molecules, and then another layer of wires crosses east and west.

This creates an electrochemical cell, which can be programmed by applying electrical charges. That opens and closes switches in the chemical substrate in a process similar to what goes on in dynamic RAM. In the next two years, HP hopes to develop 18Kbit memory with this process, Keukes says.

These memories will go into systems of incredibly small size—so tiny that they can be embedded in a piece of paper, used to deliver drugs inside the body and included in everyday objects such as a child's crib to detect, for instance, a baby in distress.

Smart Matter

These systems are also called "smart matter" because they have some computational capability and can be programmed to change shape. Dolphins, for instance, can swim very quickly because they are able to change the microstructure of their skin as water flows by it. Similar technologies could be developed for airplane and ship surfaces to respond to environmental changes using smart matter that's programmed to change shape, say researchers.

Creating such technology involves vast research across many institutions. At Palo Alto Research Center Inc. (PARC), work is under way to get smart matter to behave in a distributed way, in much the same way cells in a body interact.

"We're still trying to catch up with evolution, biological systems," says Dave Biegelsen, a research fellow at PARC who is focusing on principles for getting smart-matter devices to communicate and compute together.

Step further into the future and you enter a world envisioned by Wil McCarthy, chief technology officer of Galileo Shipyards LLC, an aerospace research facility in Lakewood, Colo., and author of Hacking Matter (Basic Books, 2004).

In McCarthy's view, having the ability to literally program matter creates an entirely new technology paradigm. Imagine the house of the future: Instead of windows consigned to a fixed location, the owner can move them around by changing different parts of the house from opaque to transparent.

This house would include large arrays of programmable dots in material that conducts electricity, much like silicon-based material does today. But with programmable quantum dots, McCarthy says, you can create metal traces inside a solid object, create an electric circuit to perform a particular task and then erase it once it's complete.

But major research hurdles exist. For instance, while researchers are starting to produce some nanoscale components, getting those components to interact with existing applications and silicon-based systems remains a major challenge, says Howard Davidson, a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems Inc.'s laboratories. Researchers are making progress, but Davidson believes the first complete nanocomputers that can connect to traditional applications or systems are 20 years off. Regarding the world McCarthy envisions, where matter can be changed in almost anything, Davidson says he believes the technology problems may be insurmountable.

WHAT IS IT? Molecules, atoms and subatomic particles that can be manipulated into memories, logic circuits and whole computers. WHAT'S THE BENEFIT? Systems are tiny, ubiquitous and cheap, so they can be used to deliver drugs inside the body, for example, or to create a “smart” adaptable surface. HOW DOES IT WORK? Electrochemical systems self-assemble and are programmed by the application of electrical charges.

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