Page 215 - Concise Encyclopedia of Robotics

NAND GATE N
See LOGIC GATE.
NANOCHIP
Researchers are always striving to get more “computer power”into less phys-
ical space.This means superminiaturization of electronic components. This is
especially important to the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
There is a practical limit to how many logic gates or switches can be
etched onto an integrated circuit (IC), or chip, of a given size. This limit
depends on the precision of the manufacturing process.As methods have
improved, the density of logic gates on a single chip has increased.
However, this can go only so far.
It has been suggested that,rather than etching the logic gates into silicon
to make computer chips, engineers might approach the problem from
the opposite point of view. Is it possible to build chips atom by atom?
This process would result in the greatest possible number of logic gates or
switches in a given volume of space. A hypothetical chip of this sort has
been called a nanochip, because the individual switches have dimensions
on the order of a few nanometers. One nanometer (1 nm) is 0.000000001
meter (10 9 m), or a millionth of a millimeter.
See also BIOCHIP and INTEGRATED CIRCUIT.
NANOROBOTICS
Superminiature robots, called nanorobots, might find all sorts of exotic
applications. Roboticist Eric Drexler has suggested that such machines
might serve as programmable antibodies, searching out and destroying
harmful bacteria and viruses in the human body. In this way, diseases
could be cured. The machines could also repair damaged cells.
Plagues that people once thought were eradicated for good, such as
tuberculosis and malaria, are evolving new strains that resist conventional

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