NSF hopes to repeal Moore's Law

By Clay Breshears (Intel) (86 posts) on February 15, 2008 at 3:35 pm

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has asked for $20 million for funding research into alternatives to current silicon technology. Infoworld reports that promising technologies such as carbon nanotubes and quantum computing would be the recipients of the proposed "Science and Engineering Beyond Moore's Law" program in fiscal 2009.

Michael Foster, division director of computing and communication foundations at NSF, predicts that in 8 to 10 years the width of the transistor gate oxide will not be viable as an insulator. Carbon nanotube technology would allow for smaller, and more efficient, transistors. Use of such technology will likely require changes to the standard architectures produced today, though.

Quantum computing would give us massive parallelism within a single register as each qubit would be in both a '0' and '1' state simultaneously. Unfortunately, it takes massive amounts of cooling equipment (whole rooms) to maintain the required temperatures for even a small quantum register. Obviously more work is needed.

In a related story, Murray Holland, as reported in the New Scientist, is working on an idea that involves creating circuits from lasers and clouds of atoms. Dubbed 'atomtronics,' this technology would have the capability of changing circuit configurations at the speed of light. It might be a bit of a stretch to imagine that atomtronics will ever completely replace silicon chips, but Holland expects that this could conceivably lead to faster PCs and aid in the development of quantum computers.

I hope NSF gets their program funded. At some point, even if all the programming and scaling problems have been put to rest, I can envision that doubling the number of cores might not be a solution that will be met with open arms. Other technological advances are going to be needed. Even if we no longer have transistors to count though, I expect that pundits will still be citing Moore's Law (perhaps a slightly bent version) in relation to the speed of innovation in whatever flavor of technology is currently being used.

Categories: Multicore

Comments (2)

February 15, 2008 10:43 PM PST


Ray Zed Blog		unknown: The National Science Foundation (NSF) has asked for $20 million for funding research into alternatives to current silicon technology. Infoworld reports that promising technologies such as carbon nanotubes and quantum computing would be
March 7, 2008 3:28 AM PST


Блоги Intel® Software Network » Top 5 ISN Blogs в феврале		[...] "NSF надеется отменить закон Мура" - пишет Клэй Бришерс (Clay Breshears). Два небольших замечания: 1) "NSF" (National Science Foundation, Национальная научная организация) – понятие концептуально отличное от "NFS" (Need For Speed, компьютерная игра) 2) закон Mура (Moore’s Law) – наблюдение, сделанное одним из основателей Intel, Гордоном Муром и исправно подтверждающееся уже в течение 43 лет. Закон Мура гласит, что технологии производства полупроводниковых микросхем развиваются экспоненциально, а число транзисторов, размещенных на одной интегральной микросхеме, удваивается каждые два года. [...]


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