As Moore’s law turns 50, what does the future hold for the transistor?

[silicon_toad2000]

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/04/as-moores-law-turns-50-what-does-the-future-hold-for-the-transistor/

But how long can Moore's law continue? While Intel's latest 14nm fabs are enabling even more transistors to be crammed onto ever smaller pieces of silicon, there may come a point when the laws of physics put a stop to the process—or at least make it so that it's no longer cost-efficient. The cost of transistors may have fallen below 20 million to the dollar (down from 2.6 million to the dollar in 2002), but with increased research and fabrication costs, even Intel is questioning whether there's an economically viable future beyond the 7nm node. Each and every process-shrink creates new problems that have to be overcome. Recently, FinFETs were introduced to combat power leakage. In the future, it could be 3D packaging (where each die is stacked directly on top of each other) in order to reduce power consumption, and cram more functionality into smaller devices like wearables.

Then there are swathes of new materials lined up to build transistors beyond 7nm. In the near future, III-V semiconductors (which will switch at lower voltages and higher speeds) combined with EUV could be the solution. Beyond that, carbon nanotubes and their high conductivity may do the job; IBM is going to great pains to make carbon nanotubes work, with the company most recently unveiling a carbon nanotube processor. Beyond that, there's plenty of hype for so-called miracle-material graphene, despite its limitations as a semiconductor. Spintronics, which uses the spin of individual electrons as an encoding method for data, has recently managed to extend the size of its technology from nanometers to millimeters by using graphene instead of metal.

That's the thing about Moore's law: no matter how many times it's said to be coming to an end (and that's been a lot of times over the last five decades), a breakthrough technology is always just around the corner to continue it. That ceaseless drive to obey Moore's law has resulted in some of the fastest and finest technological advancements in history. Even if it doesn't result in the fabled singularity, here's hoping that Moore's law, and the wonderful creations that come from it, continue long into the future.