Years ago, we physicists predicted the end of Moore’s Law that says a computer power doubles every 18 months. But we also, on the other hand, proposed a positive program. Perhaps molecular computers, quantum computers can takeover when silicon power is exhausted. But then the question is, what’s the timeframe? What is a realistic scenario for the next coming years?
Well, first of all, in about ten years or so, we will see the collapse of Moore’s Law. In fact, already, already we see a slowing down of Moore’s Law. Computer power simply cannot maintain its rapid exponential rise using standard silicon technology. Intel Corporation has admitted this. In fact, Intel Corporation is now going to three-dimensional chips, chips that compute not just flatly in two dimensions but in the third dimension. But there are problems with that. The two basic problems are heat and leakage. That’s the reason why the age of silicon will eventually come to a close. No one knows when, but as I mentioned we already now can see the slowing down of Moore’s Law, and in ten years it could flatten out completely. So what is the problem? The problem is that a Pentium chip today has a layer almost down to 20 atoms across, 20 atoms across. When that layer gets down to about 5 atoms across, it’s all over. You have two effects. Heat–the heat generated will be so intense that the chip will melt. You can literally fry an egg on top of the chip, and the chip itself begins to disintegrate And second of all, leakage–you don’t know where the electron is anymore. The quantum theory takes over. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says you don’t know where that electron is anymore, meaning it could be outside the wire, outside the Pentium chip, or inside the Pentium chip. So there is an ultimate limit set by the laws of thermal dynamics and set by the laws of quantum mechanics as to how much computing power you can do with silicon.
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