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The fundamental driver behind Moore's Law is shrinking the circuits. The problem is that the circuits are made up of atoms that deliver electrons, and electrica
by Qwertious 11y ago
The fundamental driver behind Moore's Law is shrinking the circuits. The problem is that the circuits are made up of atoms that deliver electrons, and electrical circuits fundamentally cannot go smaller than a single atom, because electricity is movement of electrons between atoms.
We could, in theory, use other technology (some sort of photon-based computer?) to get smaller (and therefore faster) computers, but that wouldn't have the Moore's law mechanism.
- sawwit 11y agoThough, aren't there also plenty of other mechanisms that affect it? For example increasing speed of manufacturing procedures and improving knowledge about how to design complex systems. The end seems to be extremely dense blocks or spheres of highly optimized computation substrate, where each atom sits very precisely at the right place. But the state of the art is merely a few layers of crude photo-lithography. Imagine nanobots being programmed to move atoms around to assemble 3D circuits at the 10nm scale. I think this is where we are heading, and this will likely grant a couple of decades of continuing exponential progress. And by then our computation power will be insane. An equivalent of the simplest human brain models will likely fit into pea.