It is known that the exponential growth we enjoyed thanks to Moore’s law is now leveling off and our ability to drive down the size of transistors using silicon is coming to the end of its road.
So the option is Carbon. Carbon Nanotubes to be precise. These are atomically thin “and ferry electricity so well, they make better semiconductors than silicon. In principle, carbon nanotube processors could run three times faster while consuming about one-third of the energy of their silicon predecessors, Shulaker says. But until now, carbon nanotubes have proved too finicky to construct complex computing systems.” Writes Maria Temming in Science News.
Carbon nanotubes are far from the current capabilities of silicon (currently they are at the 1980’s level of silicon) there is good indication that our quest to find the next silicon may be bearing fruit and our ability to remain on the exponential growth curve in computational power is safe for now.
Where I learnt it #242
A chip made with carbon nanotubes, not silicon, marks a computing milestone https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chip-carbon-nanotubes-not-silicon-marks-computing-milestone
