Introduction and carbon nanotubes
Note: Our beyond silicon feature has been fully updated. This article was first published in October 2007.
Today’s processors are made from silicon, which itself is fashioned from one of the most abundant materials on earth: sand. But as it gets harder and harder to make ever more miniature circuits – processor technology has moved from 90nm fabrication in the mid-2000s to 14nm now, with that predicted to shrink further to a barely believable 7nm or even 5nm by 2021 – chipmakers are looking for alternatives; not just materials, but maybe even biological components.
A little bit of history
Intel’s first microprocessor, the 4004, had 2,300 transistors. Modern processors have several billion. That’s been achieved by cramming ever more transistors into the same amount of silicon, but as you do that the laws of physics kick in and your processor starts generating heat – and the more power you want, the more heat you generate. The fastest Pentium 4 processors could be overclocked beyond 8GHz, but to achieve that you needed liquid …read more
Source:: techradar.com – Computing Components
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