From: Philip Witham (p.j.witham@ieee.org)
Date: Mon Jun 29 1998 - 11:54:15 MDT
Michael wrote:
>"I would be interested to hear what people think about the possibility of
>extending the reign of Moore's law beyond 2020, when we hit atomic-sized
>components, dissipating kT Joules per operation, assuming it continues on
>its merry path for the next 20 years.
>What are the possibilities for increasing computer power beyond that point?"
Remember that progress in silicon computing hardware to date has been
mostly based on increasing the number of devices per square mm, *not* per
cubic mm. That is, our computers still occupy a flat surface area perhaps
a few microns thick. there is no practical incentive to go "up" until we
hit the atomic scale.
And it's interesting that about the same time we'll hit that limit we gain
the tools to build up and out in volume, and probably to make computers
even more cheaply. Power consumption/cooling becomes a real limit some
time after hitting the molecular scale, though.
Has anyone the numbers handy? How many TOPS can one get for 100 watts of
power (half a PC's power consumption), without reversible computing?
-PW
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