Four years ago, UCLA chemistry professor R. Stanley Williams and computer giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) made mid-career changes at the same time. The company had grown into one of the world's leading computer and microprocessor makers, but it still didn't have a fundamental research group. Williams had spent the previous fifteen years in academia and feared he was losing contact with the realities of the business (earlier in his career he had worked for several years at Bell Laboratories.) The solution: a basic research lab at HP directed by Williams.

As head of the lab, Williams' chief concern is the future of computing. The progressive miniaturization of silicon-based integrated circuits has led to smaller, cheaper, more powerful machines. State-of-the-art chips now have features as small as several hundred nanometers across (a nanometer is a billionth of a meter). That's small. But according to Williams' calculations, the ability to continue to shrink silicon-based devices is likely to grind to a halt somewhere around 2010. Such predictions are hardly shocking-other Silicon Valley experts have reached similar conclusions. What is surprising is that Williams believes he and his collaborators at HP and UCLA have hit on a solution: a viable heir to silicon.