Smaller Tech Still Needs Networks

There's so much going on that the human eye can't see. Expect a lot more int he future, right inside your PC. Bell Labs is just one of many labs working in nanotechnology, creating new methods for manipulating super-small items.

In the short term, Bell researches are trying to nano-engineer integration between today's silicon and future photonic devices—those that use light for communication. That platform would lead to the development of nano-springs for moving small tech —even adaptive optic nano-lenses that could revolutionizeopthalmology. It's all part of what's called microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), aka micro machines (not related to the toys from the 1980s).

Tunable Optics

Gee Rittenhouse, vice president of Technology Integration at Bell Labs, says this research could lead to a "very dense network of nano-devices." For example, in 10 to 15 years, the health-care industry may have a mix of nano-tools, such as micro-mirros that sense light or radiation on the skin of patients, and sensors in a phone that can observe a user's breathing and heart rates—not to mention remote nanotech to monitor patients sleeping, victims in accidents being transported to a hospital (or as the accident occurs), even children in cribs to combat problems like sudden infant death syndrom (SIDS).

"The architecture and data on a network, and the way it's configured, will change radically over this 10-to-15 year period," says Rittenhouse. He calls what Bell is developing to handle this data a percipient network, where sensors process data externally without moving all of it to a central core for processing, thus speeding things up overall. It's processing that is more akin to the way the human body workds—your eyes are sensors that send only to the optical part of the brain, for example—than it is like today's relatively clunky client/server networks that don't filter data for you.—next: HP LABS >