Tools design DNA-nanotube logic. Duke University researchers combine newly developed special CAD software with a recently created DNA scaffold technique to lay the ground work for building DNA-nanotube transistors.

The tools are designed to build computer circuits at a density of 2,500 transistors per square micron, which is about 30 times more closely packed than devices made using current chipmaking technologies, according to Chris Dwyer, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University. A micron is one thousandth of a millimeter.

Transistors are arranged into logic gates, which in turn are combined by the millions into the complicated circuits that process and store data. Being able to assemble individual nanotube transistors is the prerequisite for developing a nanotube-based chipmaking technology. The key is finding ways to combine them into logic circuits.

One of the issues that could possibly derail future computing advances (as well as any potential Technological Singularity) is the so-called expiration of Moore's Law, where it becomes impossible to build faster, larger computers. This rapidly approaching problem arises from the physical limits imposed on current chip making technologies, where it becomes impossible to place circuits any closer together. DNA-nanotube technology offers one possible successor technology to current chip making methods that has the potential to circumvent this problem.