Interest of the Computer Industry
If we make thermodynamically reversible computers (which the author and others have recently shown can be made from conventional electronic devices, e.g., CMOS) then the energy dissipation per logic operation can be reduced to well below kT at T = 300 Kelvins (well below 10^-21 joules).
The computer industry is spending billions of dollars to make better computers. It is widely acknowledged within the industry that lithography is approaching its limits. Articles like The Future of the Transistor, Miniaturization of Electronics and its Limits and Outlook for VLSI: Will the Balloon Burst? quite clearly show that conventional lithography will run out of steam (in perhaps a decade, though there is less agreement about the exact time frame).
There is already interest in molecular logic devices and that interest will increase sharply as improvements in conventional manufacturing methods become increasingly difficult. However, any new proposal for manufacturing molecular computers will be weighed against (at least) the criteria mentioned above. If it cannot easily beat conventional methods after they have been pushed to their uttermost limits, then it will be rejected. The computer industry will soon be pouring vast sums into research aimed at molecular computing, but the great bulk of funding will go towards well thought out proposals that offer a realistic possibility of substantially exceeding the performance of the ultimately evolved silicon VLSI technology that we expect to develop over the next decade. If you can't beat tomorrow's mainstream computers, you might as well not try.
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