To All:
In the January issue of Scientific American there is an article titled "The Next 20 Years of Microchips: Pushing Performance Boundaries", which I thought might be interesting, since we're all obviously involved with using computers. I've copied some excerpts from the article below.
==============================================================
Alternative materials and designs will be needed for chips to continue to improve.
Size: Crossing the Bar:
Instead of fabricating transistors all in one plane (like cars packed into the lanes of a jammed silicon highway), the crossbar approach has a set of parallel nanowires in one plane that crosses over a second set of wires at right angles to it (two perpendicular highways).
Heat: Refrigerators or Wind:
A research group led by Intel has crafted a thin-film superlattice of bismuth telluride into the packaging that encases a chip. The thermoelectric material converts temperature gradients into electricity, in effect refrigerating the chip itself.
Architecture: Multiple Cores:
If the approaches can be perfected, desktop and mobile devices could contain dozens or more parallel processors, which might individually have fewer transistors than current chips but work faster as a group overall.
Slimmer Materials: Nanotubes and Self-Assembly:
Arranging molecules or even atoms can be tricky, especially given the need to assemble them at high volume during chip production. One solution could be molecules that self-assemble: mix them together, then expose them to heat or light or centrifugal forces, and they will arrange themselves into a predictable pattern.
Faster Transistors: Ultrathin Graphene:
...Researchers are confident they can make graphene transistors that are just 10 nanometers across and one atom high. Numerous circuits could perhaps be carved into a single, tiny graphene sheet.
Optical Computing: Quick as Light:
Engineers at Intel and the University of California, Santa Barbara, have built optical ?data pipes? from indium phosphate and silicon using common semiconductor manufacturing processes.
Molecular Computing: Organic Logic:
Molecules can be tiny, so circuits built with them could be far smaller than those made in silicon. One difficulty, however, is finding ways to fabricate complex circuits. Researchers hope that self-assembly might be one answer.
Quantum Computing: Superposition of 0 and 1:
In addition to enjoying superposition, quantum elements can become ?entangled.? Information states are linked across many qubits, allowing powerful ways to process information and to transfer it from location to location.
Biological Computing: Chips that Live:
A biological chip, in addition to its having orders of magnitude more elements, could provide massively parallel processing. Such computers may end up in your bloodstream rather than on your desktop. ==============================================================