Jay Clemens
The MITRE Corp. and Harvard University are collaborating to develop a nanocomputer system.
A team of scientists and engineers worked to design and assemble an ultra-small control processor called nanoFSM (nanoelectronic finite-state machine), which uses very little power to function, MITRE said Monday.
The nanoFSM is comprised of hundreds of nanowire transistors within circuits on various tiles that distribute electronic signals around the computer for calculation and signal processing operations.
The system could be applied in controlling miniscule medical therapeutic devices, tiny sensors and actuators and small robots, MITRE says.
“It was a challenge to develop a system architecture and nanocircuit designs that would pack the control functions we wanted into such a very tiny system,” said Shamik Das, chief architect of the nanocomputer system and a principal engineer and group leader of MITRE’s nanosystems group.
The development team also consists of James Ellenbogen, chief scientist for nanotechnology at MITRE, James Klemic, the company’s nanotechnology laboratory director, and Harvard’s group of researchers led by Charles Lieber.
