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Computers keep getting more powerful because silicon transistors keep getting smaller. But that miniaturization can't continue much further without a change to the transistors' design, which has remained more or less the same for 40 years. Five different test structures feature stacks of nanowires with different numbers of levels. The bottom structure has only one level; the top structure has five. One potential successor to today's silicon transistors is silicon nanowires, tiny filaments of silicon suspended like the strings of a guitar between electrically conducting pads. But while silicon nanowires are certainly small enough to keep the miniaturization of computer...

The push is on to build exascale systems that can solve the planet's biggest problems There is a race to make supercomputers as powerful as possible to solve some of the world's most important problems, including climate change, the need for ultra-long-life batteries for cars, operating fusion reactors with plasma that reaches 150 million degrees Celsius and creating bio-fuels from weeds and not corn. Supercomputers allow researchers to create three-dimensional visualizations, not unlike a video game, to run endless "what-if" scenarios with increasingly finer detail. But as big as they are today, supercomputers aren't big enough -- and a key...

Moore's Law will keep going strong for decades, Intel CTO Justin Rattner predicts. Why we're hard-wired to ignore Moore's LawRead the Intel CTO's take on why machines could ultimately match human intelligenceMoore's Law, in force for more than 40 years, says that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit will double every 18 to 24 months. Predictions of the demise of Moore's Law are routinely heard in the IT world, and some organizations are trying to find a replacement for silicon chip technology. But Rattner says that silicon has plenty of life left and said...

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y. — Gaze into the electron microscope display in Frances Ross’s laboratory here and it is possible to persuade yourself that Dr. Ross, a 21st-century materials scientist, is actually a farmer in some Lilliputian silicon world. Dr. Ross, an I.B.M. researcher, is growing a crop of mushroom-shaped silicon nanowires that may one day become a basic building block for a new kind of electronics. Nanowires are just one example, although one of the most promising, of a transformation now taking place in the material sciences as researchers push to create the next generation of switching devices smaller, faster...

An innovative and easily implemented technique in which nanoscale elements precisely assemble themselves over large surfaces could soon open doors to dramatic improvements in the data storage capacity of electronic media, according to scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst). "I expect that the new method we developed will transform the microelectronic and storage industries, and open up vistas for entirely new applications," said co-lead investigator Thomas Russell, director of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at UMass Amherst, visiting Miller Professor at UC Berkeley's Department of Chemistry, and one of...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Sixty years after transistors were invented and nearly five decades since they were first integrated into silicon chips, the tiny on-off switches dubbed the "nerve cells" of the information age are starting to show their age. The devices - whose miniaturization over time set in motion the race for faster, smaller and cheaper electronics - have been shrunk so much that the day is approaching when it will be physically impossible to make them even tinier. Once chip makers can't squeeze any more into the same-sized slice of silicon, the dramatic performance gains and cost...

InPhase Technologies claims to have broken the record for the highest data density of any commercial storage technology after successfully recording 515Gb of data per square inch. Holographic storage can dramatically boost capacity as it takes advantage of volumetric efficiencies rather than recording only on the surface of the material. Densities in holography are achieved by different factors to magnetic storage. Density depends on the number of pixels/bits in a page of data, the number of pages stored in a particular volumetric location, the dynamic range of the recording material, the thickness of the material, and the wavelength of the...

Intel plans to unfurl a prototype transistor this week that could help Moore's Law -- and the semiconductor industry as a whole -- continue to advance in the next decade. The transistor, designed by Intel and Britain's QinetiQ, is similar in structure to a traditional transistor in that it comes with a source (the place where electrons start) and a drain (their final destination) connected by a channel. A gate controls the flow of electrons across the channel; acutely controlling this flow from the source and drain determines the ones and zeros of computing. But, unlike in traditional transistors, the...

Gordon Moore - yes, he of transistor observation fame - came to the Computer History Museum last night. He sat. He chatted. He celebrated 40 years of being the most famous plotter on the planet. We ate cake. The museum sits in Mountain View, California not far from where Moore got his start at the Shockley laboratory and where he and seven others concocted the idea for Fairchild Semiconductor. Such trivia marks just the beginning of the semiconductor history tour Moore and his questioner fellow luminary Carver Mead walked the audience through during a two-hour session. It's hard to expect...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A British engineer has collected a $10,000 (5,200 pounds) bounty for turning in his near-mint copy of a famous forty-year-old electronics magazine, but not before irking university librarians who rushed to secure their copies from thieves. Intel this month posted a reward for a copy of the April 1965 issue of Electronics, in which company co-founder Gordon Moore accurately forecast years of exponential improvements in computer chip performance. Later dubbed Moore's Law, the forecast has become gospel for $200 billion chip industry. News of the reward reached Surrey, England, where an engineer named David Clark found...

Forty years ago, Electronics Magazine asked Intel co-founder Gordon Moore to write an article summarizing the state of the electronics industry. The article outlined what became known as Moore's Law, the observation that the number of transistors--tiny on/off switches that churn out electrical signals that get represented as 1s and 0s--on a chip can be doubled in a short period of time. Adopted as a yardstick by the tech industry, the concept is one of the reasons the industry evolved into a high-growth, but high-risk, affair. This FAQ explains the impact and consequences of the principles set down in the...

Lurking behind the digitalization of the world is the dream of perfection, that asymptote toward which Moore's Law races faster than any other process human beings have yet devised....A dangerous form of this perfectionism has, I think, infected the presidential campaign this year. It regards the war in Iraq.

Intel says that its Tri-Gate transistor, a futuristic transistor that will let electricity flow more freely inside chips, is moving closer to reality. The Tri-Gate transistor, one of the tools that may let Intel continue to follow Moore's Law in the second half of the decade, has been placed on the "pathfinder" development path at Intel, said Ken David, co-director of components research in the Technology Manufacturing Group at Intel. That means that it is one of a select few design alternatives that will get incorporated into chips by 2007. "We've moved beyond the research stage and are in the...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Gordon Moore, the computer pioneer who four decades ago predicted the explosion in transistor power driving the electronics revolution, said on Monday he sees at least another decade of progress ahead. Moore, 74, the creator of "Moore's Law," told a meeting of many of the world's preeminent chip designers that engineers must concentrate on overcoming power leakage and reducing heat levels as more and more circuits are crammed closer together. "No physical quantity can continue to change exponentially forever," he cautioned. "Your job is delaying forever." The co-founder and chairman emeritus of Intel Corp., the world's...

One of the major technical headaches facing chipmaker Intel is the leaking of current from inactive processors, company chairman Andy Grove told an audience at International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco yesterday. "Current is becoming a major factor and a limiter on how complex we can build chips," said Grove. He said the company’ engineers "just can’t get rid of" power leakage. The problem of leakage threatens the future validity of Moores Law. As chips become more powerful and draw more power, leakage tends to increase. The industry is used to power leakage rates of up to fifteen per...

n these recessionary times, holding the line on costs is foremost in most executives' minds. Thankfully, in the technology world--unlike, say, real estate--Moore's Law and its corollaries keep innovation chugging along and prices continually on the decline, thereby lowering costs for us consumers. Case in point: You can buy a low-end computer today for $400, when five years ago it would run you at least $2000. This has some PC manufacturers jumping into a different market altogether: the low cost corporate computer. IDC reports that sales of "white boxes," or generic low-cost PCs -- equipped with less than state-of-the-art components...