when IBM announced that it was going to implement a new self-assembly process to reduce computer chip feature size, increase processor speed by 35% and reduce manufacturing energy by 15%, i looked into exactly what was meant by “self-assembly.” one-time medialab colleague saul griffith’s phd thesis proposed completely physical systems for self-replication inspired by biological computation and replication. as part of his thesis he built a gross self-assembler out of an air-hockey table and carefully designed pieces that only lock in particular ways, enabling self-assembly of complex shapes and self-replication of compound objects:
while it’s been demonstrated through robots, ibm designed a new material which produces trillions of air gaps when heated to assemble the channels of the multi-layer chip – the material “assembles” itself. here is saul’s TED talk about the potential for physical computation: