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Are processors pushing up against the limits of physics?

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  Are processors pushing up against the limits of physics? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-08-16 03:17 +0000
    Re: Are processors pushing up against the limits of physics? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-08-16 19:29 +0000

#4403 — Are processors pushing up against the limits of physics?

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/08/are-processors-pushing-up-against-the-limits-of-physics/

   When I first started reading Ars Technica, performance of a processor
   was measured in megahertz, and the major manufacturers were rushing to
   squeeze as many of them as possible into their latest silicon. Shortly
   thereafter, however, the energy needs and heat output of these beasts
   brought that race crashing to a halt. More recently, the number of
   processing cores rapidly scaled up, but they quickly reached the point
   of diminishing returns. Now, getting the most processing power for each
   Watt seems to be the key measure of performance.

   None of these things happened because the companies making processors
   ran up against hard physical limits. Rather, computing power ended up
   being constrained because progress in certain areas - primarily energy
   efficiency - was slow compared to progress in others, such as feature
   size. But could we be approaching physical limits in processing power?
   In this week's edition of Nature, The University of Michigan's Igor
   Markov takes a look at the sorts of limits we might face.

   ...

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#4425

On 2014-08-16, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
> http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/08/are-processors-pushing-up-against-the-limits-of-physics/
>
>    None of these things happened because the companies making
>    processors ran up against hard physical limits. Rather, computing
>    power ended up being constrained because progress in certain areas
>    - primarily energy efficiency - was slow compared to progress in
>    others, such as feature size. But could we be approaching physical
>    limits in processing power?  In this week's edition of Nature, The
>    University of Michigan's Igor Markov takes a look at the sorts of
>    limits we might face.
>
Short answer: yes.

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