Re:The world's smallest ARM chip announced, designed for swa...
by Someone on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @12:28PM
(#5293554)
I think that, if we mamage to do that, the biochemists will win that race, not the lithographers.
Veins have the (for this goal) unfortunate property of repeatedly splitting into less wide veins. I think macrophages are the largest cells in the blood; they typically are 20 micrometer or 2E-5m in diameter. To get there, this thing would have to shrink by a factor of 100 linearly, or 10,000 in area. That's about 13 Moore's law iterations or 20-ish years.
I doubt we will get those from silicon. And that's ignoring the fact that capillaries are 5-10 micrometer; AFAIK, lots of cells have to fold to get through them.
Because of that, this 'ingestible' claim aims more at stuff working in your guts than at stuff making it into the bloodstream that way.
Veins have the (for this goal) unfortunate property of repeatedly splitting into less wide veins. I think macrophages are the largest cells in the blood; they typically are 20 micrometer or 2E-5m in diameter. To get there, this thing would have to shrink by a factor of 100 linearly, or 10,000 in area. That's about 13 Moore's law iterations or 20-ish years.
I doubt we will get those from silicon. And that's ignoring the fact that capillaries are 5-10 micrometer; AFAIK, lots of cells have to fold to get through them.
Because of that, this 'ingestible' claim aims more at stuff working in your guts than at stuff making it into the bloodstream that way.