Avogadro-Scale Engineering:Form and Function

http://cba.mit.edu

NSF CCR-0122419

Physics Chemistry Biology Electrical Mechanical Civil Architecture

Design

Algorithm

Encoding

Mechanism

length scale

level ofdescription

Bits

Atoms

CBA

nm

mm

μm

input output

m

Demonstrations ofemergent engineering

(don’t scale!)

Deep thinking aboutemergent engineering

(don’t work!)

rigor + relevance?

error-corrected assembly

physical graphical message-passing

distributed convex optimization

local

global

self-modification/reproduction

ThresholdsThresholds

noise

errors

1948: Communications (Shannon)

1963: Computation (Winograd, von Neumann)

~2003: Fabrication

VLSI

VHSIC

VHC