Moonshine said:To my knowledge (which is often poor), silicon chips will hit their limit by 2020. What technology will replace silicon?
graphene
optical or quantum computing
What else is out there? What are your opinions?
f95toli said:Silicon "reached its limit" a long time ago if you consider the speed of individual transistors. This is why III-V semiconductors like GaAs and GaN and not silicon are used in microwave circuits.
However, if you are talking about the speed of computers the answer is more complicated. The reason is the speed of a computer depends on more than just the speed at which you can clock your processor. An obvious example would be that modern computers tend to contain several CPUs ("cores") which speeds of the execution of programs that are written to take advantage of this. Hence, it is possible to make faster computers without using faster transistors.
The reason why this is relevant is that "which technology will replace silicon" depends on more than just how quickly you can turn on and off a transistor: you also have to be able to scale up the technology in such a way that you can reliably fabricate at least a few tens of millions of transistors on a wafer (for a CPU much more) AND and the process needs to be cost-efficient.
The problem is that whereas there are many "fast" technologies are around nothing can compete with silicon when it comes to scalability and cost. Hence, silicon will be around for a VERY long time; certainly longer than 2020.
That said, some "novel" technologies can potentially co-exist with siliicon. One example would be optical busses for inter-chip interconnects. It is also possible that some new materials will be introduced in the silicon process for making vias etc (maybe even something as "exotic" as carbon nanotubes).
There are some indications that the "limit" will not actually be the material but the cost of fabrication. A good example would be that the price of the lithographer (the machine that that "draws" the circuit on the chip) that will be needed to make CPUs in a couple of CPU generations is about the same as the price of a whole factory just a decade ago (they already exist a prototypes, as far as I understand there are two in the whole world, Intel has one); and in a typical factory you need a few of them.
There are probably only 3-4 companies in the world that can afford to build the required factories and they will only invest the money if they think they can sell a LOT of CPUs at a reasonable price. Hence, once we start to see major deviations from Moore's law it is likely to be due to economical and not technological factors.
chroot said:Optical clock distribution will definitely be the next stage in digital design. Currently, about of a third of the chip area of a modern microprocessor is devoted to simply sending the clock everywhere it needs to go with minimal skew.
Next on the list will probably be spintronics. Spintronics uses electron spins to encode information, rather than just the movement of electrons. This technology is pretty radical, and will keep silicon viable for another 50+ years, in my estimation. Spintronics is, in many ways, a stepping stone to true silicon-based quantum computation, which will probably be commonplace by 2100.
- Warren
Silicon has been the primary material used in electronic devices for decades. However, as technology advances, researchers are constantly looking for new materials that can potentially replace silicon. Here are the 5 most frequently asked questions about what will supplant silicon:
Silicon has been the backbone of the electronics industry due to its abundance and relatively inexpensive production. However, as devices become smaller and more powerful, the limitations of silicon are becoming apparent. For example, silicon's ability to conduct electricity decreases as devices shrink, causing heat buildup and reducing performance. Additionally, silicon-based transistors are reaching their physical limits, making it difficult to further miniaturize devices.
There are several materials that are being researched as potential replacements for silicon. Some of the most promising candidates include graphene, carbon nanotubes, and gallium nitride. These materials have unique properties that could potentially overcome the limitations of silicon and improve device performance.
One of the advantages of silicon is its abundance and low cost of production. However, the cost and availability of these alternative materials vary. For example, graphene is still relatively expensive to produce, while carbon nanotubes and gallium nitride are more readily available and have lower production costs. As research and technology advancements continue, the cost and availability of these materials may change.
While these alternative materials have potential benefits, they also have their own limitations. For example, graphene is a single layer of atoms, making it very fragile and difficult to manufacture in large quantities. Carbon nanotubes can also be difficult to produce consistently, and gallium nitride has a higher melting point than silicon, which can make it more challenging to work with.
Research and development of alternative materials to silicon are ongoing, but it may take some time before we see them being used in commercial devices. It takes a significant amount of time and resources to develop and scale up production of these materials to a point where they can be widely used in electronic devices. However, many experts believe that we will start to see these materials being used in specialized applications in the near future, with more widespread adoption in the next decade or so.