Re: "Drexlerian" as an epithet, was Re: Saul Kent's powerful newcryonics organization

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri Feb 15 2002 - 08:50:39 MST


"Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
>
> Michael Butler wrote:
> > It seems that one must deal with the notion that self-replicating general
> > purpose assemblers is Drexler's sole contribution/albatross;
>
> I don't consider that to be the case. If one reads Nanosystems
> and Eric's other papers carefully there are a huge number of
> other things discussed. A few would include -- snip..
> the fact that heat removal is the *real*
> problem for high computation densities,

I'm wondering why chip companies are not looking at building MEMS
cooling systems into chips, and why they are not already designing
cooling ports into the chips. A number of evenly spaced venturi ports
across the chip face for the fan to draw air through should provide a
significant increase in cooling. As chip designs get thicker, this will
be a very necessary design feature.

Dust buildup in the PC is easily compensated for by use of HEPA or
HEPA-like filtration on a positive pressure fan on the power supply.

As for nano devices, well, I think that the designers will have to
figure out how to use lasing to cool them, though switching to optical
computation will go a long way to reducing thermal problems. Note that
heat is simply low grade photons, so a photonic chip that dumps high
energy photons after use should effectively reduce thermal noise.



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