http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/iop-tfo032608.php
The future of computing -- carbon nanotubes and superconductors to replace
the silicon chip
The future of computing is under the spotlight at the Institute of Physics'
Condensed Matter and Materials Physics conference at the Royal Holloway
College of the University of London on 26-28 March.
The end of the silicon chip
The silicon chip, which has supplied several decades' worth of remarkable
increases in computing power and speed, looks unlikely to be capable of
sustaining this pace for more than another decade - in fact, in a plenary
talk at the conference, Suman Datta of Pennsylvania State University, USA,
gives the conventional silicon chip no longer than four years left to run.
As silicon computer circuitry gets ever smaller in the quest to pack more
components into smaller areas on a chip, eventually the miniaturized
electronic devices are undermined by fundamental physical limits. They start
to become leaky, making them incapable of holding onto digital information.
So if the steady increases in computing capability that we have come to take
for granted are to continue, some new technology will have to take over from
silicon.