IBM has announced the conception of what will be the next generation of processors : the molecular processors. The technical revolution replaces the classical transistors by carbon-based molecular tubes which are 500 times smaller.

This will allow to have smaller and faster processors. Researchers have already built prototypes of these chipsets but some improvements are still remaining to be done. At first speeding up the production time which is actually very long for an industrial context. Secondly, integrating some basic logical operations that exist on actual processors. This needs to set up special molecular electric interactions.

Molecular processor technology is expected to be industrialized starting from 2013 but not more far then 2020. But now, let software thinkers imagine what we will use them for in the future !