Re: Transistor physics
At the same time, it is quite logical that the returns of research diminish as the precision increases.
Yes, Moore's Law is dead, but it served its purpose.
Now we are going to branch out to 3D chips at 1nm and that will likely be the end of CPU research for a long time.
If computers have continued to increase in execution speed, it is not only because the CPU has evolved, the entire concept of a computer has evolved.
The IBM PC had an 8086 at 4.7Mhz, and everything worked at that speed.
Today, we have computers with a frequency for the CPU, another for RAM, another for magnetic storage, etc. The computer itself is a vast multi-tasking environment, and that is where we've increased its efficiency.
Now we're looking at stacking CPU layers to eeke out more performance. We'll soon be doing that with RAM as well (if we haven't already).
There will, however, come a time when we've explored all the combinations, and made all the enhancements.
It's inevitable.