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the post-silicon future

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  the post-silicon future RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-07-13 01:25 +0000
    Re: the post-silicon future john <nospam@no.net> - 2014-07-13 22:58 -0800

#4010 — the post-silicon future

From the «it's all just sand anyway» department:
Title: The Post-Silicon future
Author: zafiro17@pipedot.org
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 18:05:14 -0400
Link: http://pipedot.org/story/2014-07-12/the-postsilicon-future

It's hard to understate the impact of the silicon chip and the advances
wrought by Moore's law and steady research and development in miniaturizing
transistors on silicon. But we're getting close to the limits, and getting
beyond 9nm puts us at the limits of physics, it would seem. So what's next?
IBM is hoping it will be the first to find out.[1] Not one to shy away from
the big bets, IBM is putting $3B into researching the next step, including
having a go at 7nm processes, new semiconducting materials like
Gallium-Arsenide, and technologies like carbon nanotubes and graphene. At
7nm, the game changes significantly, and quantum physics begins to matter as
much as traditional physics. Steve Torbak points out there's hope for
technologies like racetrack memory and neuromorphic memory, too[2].Or maybe,
there's still room for improvement with what we've got. We're not done with
Systems-on-a-Chip, after all, and DARPA has recently taken this approach to
put an entire communications stack on a dime-sized chip[3].[Ed. note: All I
know is, to watch the next generation of silly cat videos, we're going to
need a serious boost in hardware. /grin]

Links:
[1]: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186048-ibm-plows-3-billion-into-7nm-chip-research-and-post-silicon-technologies (link)
[2]: http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2014/07/11/taking-silicon-out-silicon-valley/ (link)
[3]: http://inthecapital.streetwise.co/2014/07/07/darpa-tiny-communications-chip/ (link)

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#4014

RS Wood wrote:

> From the «it's all just sand anyway» department:
> Title: The Post-Silicon future
> Author: zafiro17@pipedot.org
> Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 18:05:14 -0400
> Link: http://pipedot.org/story/2014-07-12/the-postsilicon-future
> 
> It's hard to understate the impact of the silicon chip and the advances
> wrought by Moore's law and steady research and development in
> miniaturizing transistors on silicon. But we're getting close to the
> limits, 

Just an observation

It is interesting that this story comes up about every ~5 years since the 
mid 90s. The exact NM numbers quoted keeps getting smaller, something about 
quantum mechanics is mentioned, and then copper, gallium, or other new 
materials are mentioned as coming to the rescue. Or even photonic computing 
IIRC. Doggone computers just keep getting faster though. Maybe the 
predictions will be accurate this time??

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