Moore’s Law kept on going not just for ten years but for about fifty years, to everybody’s surprise. Yet it probably has now at last run out of steam. The atomic limit is in sight. Transistors have shrunk to less than 100 atoms across, and there are billions on each chip. Since there are now trillions of chips in existence, that means there are billions of trillions of transistors on Planet Earth. They are probably now within an order of magnitude of equalling the number of grains of sand on the planet. Most sand grains, like most microchips, are made largely of silicon, albeit in oxidized
...more
