Sustaining Moore’s Law

[Renew Deal]

Feb. 2005 -- The often-quoted Moore's Law says that we can expect processors to double in capacity every 18 months. And that has held true. Now computer scientists warn that — without some significant breakthrough — further advances in computing power and speed will be halted in the next decade by the physical limitations of conventional silicon technology.

But scientists in HP Labs have demonstrated that it could be possible to continue advancing computer power by eliminating the need for transistors — the basic building block of computing for the last 50 years. In a paper published today in the Journal of Applied Physics(1), three members of HP Labs' Quantum Science Research (QSR) group in Palo Alto offer a feasibility-level description and demonstration of the "crossbar latch" — a bistable-switch latch that promises to replace the traditional transistor and to resolve some issues that have stymied progress in molecular scale computing.
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http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/feature_stories/2005/05crossbar.html?jumpid=em_EL_TAW/US/Mar05_ENT/FeatureIC/mooreslaw

[TroubleMan]

1. They've had a couple of significant breakthroughs lately

but they can't be practically applied just yet.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7281

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7253

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524876.000


It would be sweet if they could get the technology in the second article so that it can be practically applied.