Week 9: Muddy

Moore's Law in itself is easy enough to understand. It states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every eighteen months. This is heavily intertwined with computer performance as well. Computers have been, essentially, doubling in power every eighteen months for decades. But we have come to a point where Moore's Law is in danger of slowing down significantly.

"The important thing is that Moore's Law is exponential, and no exponential is forever... but we can delay forever."      

-Gordon Moore 

Moore himself stated that Moore's law will not last forever. There is a cap on all things, including technology. But have we reached that cap yet? Some scientists believe that we are very close to reaching that cap while others believe we still have a few more decades left under the expansion outlined in Moore's law.

Where things got confusing, to me, was when I started researching what kinds of technology are being researched to keep computing power on the rise. There were a bunch of different ideas I ran across including: silicon nanowires, extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), molecular computing, DNA computing, and quantum computing. From what I understand, the idea is to make everything smaller and more efficient without overheating. A few of these ideas are outlined below.

• Silicon Nanowires- Utilizes a highly efficient cylindrical transistor. This geometry provides the highest efficiency because the entire surface area of the wire is conducting. More in depth (and technical) information can be found here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/16/silicon_nanowires/
• Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography- Etches computer chips with a wavelength of around 14nm while currently technology uses a wavelength of 193nm. This will much more efficient but is not currently precise or controlled enough to be put into effect. More on EUV and other potential lithography techniques can be found here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/15/euv_challenges/
• Quantum Computing- While this is probably the farthest possibility on the horizon, there is the most potential in it. Scientists were able to perform basic multiplication problems using only 5 atoms. Think about that for a second... Scientists were able to prove "3x5=15" with only 5 atoms. That is incredible, but the technology is still very, very young. 

This is another video I found by Michio Kaku talking about several possibilities in the future of computing and some of the problems scientists face trying to bring the technology to the public. Video can also be found at: http://bigthink.com/ideas/42825

 

For a final note on Moore's Law, here are Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.