What perplexes me is that neither Intel, AMD, IBM, or any other company, as far as I can tell, is pursuing the bootstrapping path of self-assembling nanotech. Once someone does it, every other company is going to be left several orders of magnitude in the dust, so it surprises me that no one is going for it.
Well, you can laugh, but it's legitimate stuff. Right now, all we have is self-assembling dna structures, but there's a bootstrappable path towards "tiny robots".
We have self-assembling dna structures, which we don't even fully understand and which are the result of millions of years of evolution. The steps are being made towards such tiny robots, but it's preposterous to mention them as a viable alternative to the current chip fab strategy.
Oh no, it is extremely complex. However, every step along the path towards it provides benefits and, slowly but surely, researchers are moving forward. I think the field just needs more funding and more scientists dedicated towards it.
I believe that the nanobots required to perform such a feat are at least several decades away, if not further.
You're essentially trying to replicate what cells do in a growing embryo, and even with several billion years of evolution that is still a very very error-prone process.
You're right about the self-replicating part, that's probably very far away (and not necessary for this). But I think self-assembling nano-mechanisms are closer. We can already sort of do it with self-assembling dna mechanisms and, theoretically, those can bootstrap into more complex tech made out of better materials
