INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Main image credit: IntelWe live in a world powered by computer circuits
Modern life depends on semiconductor chips and transistors on silicon-based integrated circuits, which switch electronic signals on and off
Most use the abundant and cheap element silicon because it can be used to both prevent and allow the flow of electricity; it both insulates
and semiconducts.Until recently, the microscopic transistors squeezed onto silicon chips have been getting half the size each year
With the internet of Things (IoT), AI, robotics, self-driving cars, 5G and 6G phones all computing-intensive endeavors, the future of tech
Back in 1965, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, observed that the number of transistors on a one-inch computer chip double every year,
Now that period is 18 months, and it's getting longer
In truth, Moore's Law isn't a law, merely an observation by someone who worked for a chip-maker, but the increased timescales mean
intensive computing applications of the future could be under threat.A smartphone contains over 200 billion transistors
talking about a successor to silicon
escalation until at least 2025
topping-out of silicon is a problem because computing devices of the future will need to be both more powerful and more agile
they will have to be 'brain-like'
cold computingSome researchers are looking into new ways of getting higher-performance computers that use less power
Microsoft's Project Natick, as part of which an enormous data center was sunk off the coast of Scotland's Orkney Islands, but it's
Taking the temperature down further means less leakage of current and reducing the threshold voltage at which transistors switch.Microsoft
sank a data center in the Atlantic as part of its Project Natick
operating temperature for these types of systems is that of liquid nitrogen at 77K (-270C)
semiconductors made from two or more elements whose properties make them faster and more efficient than silicon
He explains that these materials outperform silicon in the areas of speed, latency, light detection and emission, which will help make
possible applications like 5G and autonomous vehicles.Compound semiconductors will find their way into 5G phones
quantum world's superposition and entanglement phenomena IBM, Google, Intel and others are in a race to create quantum computers with
computer architects have many breakthroughs to make before the potential of quantum computing can be realized, and there's a simple test
says Adrian Criddle, Vice President Sales and Marketing Group and UK General Manager at Intel
a single electron on a silicon-based device, and Intel recently utilized them on its recent 'world's smallest quantum chip'
system still only works close to absolute zero; cold computing will go hand in hand with the development of quantum computers
Meanwhile, IBM has its Q, a 50-qubit processor, and the Google Quantum AI Lab has its 72-qubit Bristlecone processor.What about graphene and
carbon nanotubesThese so-called miracle materials could one day replace silicon
So computer systems of the future will probably be layers of various technologies, each one there to counteract the disadvantage of
another.So there's no one answer to extending the life of silicon into the next computing era
Compound semiconductors, quantum computing and cold computing are all likely to play a major role in research and development
It's likely that the future of computing will see a hierarchy of machines, but as of now, nobody knows what tomorrow's computers will
