Computing after Moore’s Law [Slide Show]

The technologies chip makers hope can keep Moore’s Law alive

COGNITIVE COMPUTERS To build chips “at least as ‘smart’ [as a] housefly,” researchers in IBM’s cognitive computing group are exploring processors that ditch the calculator like Von Neumann architecture... Courtesy of IBM communications
MEMRISTORS Hewlett–Packard is developing chips based on an entirely new type of electronic component: the memristor. Predicted in 1971 but only developed in 2008, memristors—the term is a portmanteau combining “memory” and “resistor”—possess the strange ability to “remember” how much current previously flowed through it... Courtesy of Richard Lewington/Hewlett-Packard
GRAPHENE One of the more radical moves a manufacturer of silicon computer chips could make would be to ditch silicon altogether. It’s not likely to happen soon but last year IBM did announce that it was spending $3 billion to look for alternatives... Credit: University of Exeter/Flickr
CARBON NANOTUBES Roll a single-atom sheet of carbon into a cylinder and the situation improves: carbon nanotubes develop a band gap and, along with it, some semiconducting properties. But Pavlus found that even the researchers charged with developing carbon nanotube–based computing had their doubts... Credit: Engineering at Cambridge/Flickr
Advertisement

Newsletter