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AN INTRODUCTION TO
NANOCOMPUTING
Elaine Ann Ebreo Cara, Stephen Chu, Mary Mehrnoosh
Eshaghian-Wilner, Eric Mlinar, Alireza Nojeh, Fady Rofail,
Michael M. Safaee, Shawn Singh, Daniel Wu, and
Chun Wing Yip
The continuous shrinking of transistors has made it possible to do amazing feats
with computers, and a major theme of the microelectronics era has been ''smaller
is better.'' Today, technology has already shrunk to the nanometer scale, causing
many practical challenges and motivating the search for new nanoscale materials
and designs. In this chapter, we present a brief introduction to the concept of
nanocomputing and provide a high level overview of nanocomputing devices and
paradigms. We also discuss some applications of nanocomputing such as
biomedical engineering and neuroscience.
1.1. INTRODUCTION
In 1959, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman posed this question to his fellow
physicists: ''Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia
Britannica on the head of a pin?'' In that lecture, aptly named ''There's Plenty of
Room at the Bottom,'' Feynman challenged scientists and engineers to imagine
what could be possible using nanoscale structures. He used computing as a prime
example, suggesting that wires and circuits could be shrunk to only hundreds of
angstroms in size [1], making it possible to combine billions of devices to perform
amazing tasks.
The transistor, today's most prevalent modern computing device, can already
be manufactured as small as hundreds of atoms across. This could mark the
 
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