De voortdurende minimalisatie van silicium transistors zal binnen afzienbare tijd zijn fysieke grenzen bereiken, zo bericht Yahoo! News. Het verhaaltje achter de wet van Moore, die stelt dat de capaciteit van chips ieder 18 maanden verdubbelt, zal niet langer gelden:
Citing an article in the journal Science, the Times reported that Paul Packan, a scientist with Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, said semiconductor engineers have not found ways around basic physical limits beyond the generation of silicon chips that will begin to appear next year.Packan called the apparent impasse ``the most difficult challenge the semiconductor industry has ever faced.''
``These fundamental issues have not previously limited the scaling of transistors,'' Packan wrote in the Sept. 24 issue of Science. ``There are currently no known solutions to these problems.''
For more than 30 years, the computer industry has relied on a phenomenon known as Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, which was the basic force underlying the computer revolution and the rise of the Internet, the Times said.
[...] Executives at Intel cautioned against seeing the problem as insurmountable, adding they were confident answers could be found. But Dennis Allison, a Silicon Valley physicist and computer designer, told the Times, ``The fact that this warning comes from Intel's process group is really significant. This says that they see actual limits.''
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