IBM’s George Gulevski want to use carbon nanotubes to “self-construct” microchips. The nanotube chips may be able to use less electricity and be even six to ten times as fast as the silicon-based ones we use nowadays.

In this TED talk, Gulevski outlines what will happen when Moore’s Law no longer applies, when silicon computer chip can no longer shrink in size by half and double in performance every year.

The future of nanotechnology will imply the development of chemical processes to compel billions of carbon nanotubes to assemble themselves into the patterns needed to build circuits, much the same way natural organisms build intricate, diverse and elegant structures.