‘Scary-small’ desktop computers

At 150' wide and labeled with the ENIAC acronym, the world’s first computer hit the stage in 1946 as if straight out of an old black-and-white science fiction movie. Except, as the Public Broadcasting Service aptly noted in its online “Transistorized” report, ENIAC probably “spawned those movies.”

If you doubt this, look at the ENIAC photo below, then check out one of those old movies. Heck, I’ll bet you could download and watch all those movies on Apple’s Mac mini, which, by the way, is just about the smallest home desktop computer available.

From a room-size computer to a Mac mini—it sort of makes you wonder: How might Steve Jobs have introduced ENIAC to the world all those years ago.

Financed by the U.S. Army, ENIAC was built at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering. By the time the computer made its debut on Feb. 14, 1946, it was said to cost nearly $500,000, or about $5.5 million in 2010 dollars. Image courtesy U.S. Army.

Apple’s Mac mini computer measures 7.7" × 7.7" × 1.4" and is among the smallest commercial desktop computers. Images courtesy Apple.

“I have something very special to show you today,” he might have said. “Something … magical … something … uh … yes this huge thing behind me. It’s my pleasure to introduce to you the world’s first Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, which takes days to program and a roomful of monkeys waving fans to keep cool.”

Strike that. Just saying the whole name would have made Jobs’ brilliant marketing mind suffer a meltdown of ENIAC proportions. Not that it was ever intended for personal use, but just where would you put that home office? Said to fill a 30' × 50' room, ENIAC would have overtaken most homes in its day.

On the other hand, you could fit 20,827 Mac minis in the same room as one ENIAC—given a ceiling height of 8'. Where you put all the monitors and keyboards is up to you.

Oh, and let’s not forget that ENIAC could only handle one “program” at a time. Not quite the stuff of science fiction anymore.

Inside scoop

While desktop computers may get a bit smaller than the Mac mini, such as the 6.1" × 7.6" × 0.9" Lenovo IdeaCenter Q180, the outside form factor isn’t so much the story as is the incredible shrinking transistors and microprocessors inside desktop computers. The smaller these electronic components get, the faster computers become. Along with more speed, of course, comes more functionality.

Setting up a job on ENIAC, by comparison, took a team of programmers a week or two. Given that one program was all ENIAC could run at one time, comparing ENIAC to computers today is a lot like comparing the 1951 version of the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” to the 2008 version starring Keanu Reeves.

Without the ever-shrinking electronic circuitry and increasing power of computers, we never would have witnessed the swarm of tiny metal-eating bugs devour an 18-wheeler as it barreled down the highway. For that matter, Keanu never would have been able to call for “lots and lots of guns” in “The Matrix” triliogy. Computerized special effects like that take—that’s right—lots and lots of transistors.

With Intel’s new 3-D Tri-Gate transistor technology, the demand for smaller and more powerful microprocessors has already been met.

The Tri-Gate transistor will be used in Intel’s new 22nm microprocessor, the Ivy Bridge. Using a manufacturing process dubbed the 22nm node—a reference to the size of the individual transistors—the Ivy Bridge is the first high-volume chip to use the 3-D transistor technology. Just for some perspective, by the way, Intel reports that more than 6 million Tri-Gate transistors could fit in a period, as in the punctuation at the end of this sentence.

The Tri-Gate technology is a significant departure from the traditional 2-D transistor with a planar gate. The Tri-Gate incorporates a thin 3-D silicon fin that rises up vertically from the silicon substrate. This change enables operation at lower voltage and with less power leakage, according to Intel and others working on similar 3-D technology.

Stacking up

Just a few short months after Intel's announcement, 3M and IBM unveiled plans to jointly develop adhesives that can be used to stack semiconductors. The companies expect to build commercial microprocessors composed of layers of up to 100 separate chips, according to an IBM news release.

“Today’s chips, including those containing ‘3-D’ transistors, are in fact 2-D chips that are still very flat structures,” said Bernard Meyerson, vice president of research at IBM. “Our scientists are aiming to develop materials that will allow us to package tremendous amounts of computing power into a new form factor—a silicon ‘skyscraper.’ We believe we can advance the state of the art in packaging, and create a new class of semiconductors that offer more speed and capabilities while they keep power usage low—key requirements for many manufacturers, especially for makers of tablets and smartphones.”

As promising as that technology certainly seems, however, new research out of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, has produced the narrowest conductive wires ever made from silicon—just four atoms wide and one atom tall—that could take microprocessors a quantum leap down in size. (See “Electronic circuitry takes a quantum leap down in size.”)

Bent Weber, a doctoral student at the ARC Center of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the university, has shown that the tiny wire can carry the same electrical current as copper, according to a university report released Jan. 6.

The wires, made by placing chains of phosphorus atoms within a silicon crystal with the aid of scanning tunneling microscopy, have demonstrated that electrical interconnects in silicon can shrink to atomic dimensions without loss of functionality, reported Michelle Simmons, director of the ARC Center.

Pushing such technology to the next level, noted Simmons, has been a major focus at the ARC Center as researchers strive to develop a silicon-based quantum computer where single atoms would serve as the individual units of computation.

“It will come down to the wire,” Simmons said. “We are on the threshold of making transistors out of individual atoms. But to build a practical quantum computer, we have recognized that the interconnecting wiring and circuitry also needs to shrink to the atomic scale.”

In Hollywood, that’s good news for “The Incredible Shrinking Man.” Do I hear “remake,” anyone? µ