ONE of the pillars of the microelectronics revolution is crumbling. The notion of “scaling” – the practice of shrinking transistors so that they operate at ever higher speeds – is reaching the end of the line. If transistors get any smaller, say experts, they will begin to malfunction.
Until now, scaling has both increased speeds and allowed the number of components that can be fitted on a chip to double about once every two years, a trend famously expressed as “Moore’s law”. Everyone knew that this could not go on forever, but no one expected the end to come so soon. Yet…
