Nanotechnology will likely become mainstream around 2015, when chip makers have exchausted their ability to shrink the wires and switches that make up the current CPU and memory modules.
"In between 2003 and 2005 there has been a tipping point," said Philip J. Kuekes, a physics researcher in the quantum structures research initiative department at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, Calif. "All of the buzz is about nanotechnology."
As conventional transistors become no larger than a handful of molecules, strange behavior in the quantum realm comes into play, making it impossible to determine accurately the on or off states of the transistor.
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