Forbes has posted an interview with Bernard Meyerson, IBM’s chief technologist, on the future of chip evolution and exactly how far Moore’s Law can be bent. It’s pretty heady stuff. Here’s what Meyerson sees immediately happening, within the next decade:
The behavior of semiconductors goes quantum mechanical when you get down to 10 nanometers. After that you have to do nuclear fission, which is not something I want to be around to see. But Moore’s Law, if you want to change its meaning, is completely extensible. Gordon Moore said that you can double the amount of stuff on a chip in a certain amount of time. People have always interpreted that as doubling the amount of stuff in a unit area. The reality is we’re going to go to vertical integration and chip stacks. The amount of stuff per square-unit area is going to double.
Admittedly, a lot of Meyerson’s interview is way above my head, but he talks a lot about moving on to 3D chips, light-based computing, unlimited caches and “entire planes of super high-density memory right above a plane of logic.” This impresses me, since as stupid as I am, I do know that they are all critical components of a Timecube.
The Next Phase of Moore’s Law [Forbes]
bwa ha ha, timecube! “You are all educated stupid!” Although it’s probably a bit of a disservice to Mr. Meyerson to refer to his creative vision for the future of technology in the same post as the insane racist bigotry that Mr. Ray has published for the last 10 years. I don’t think I’d be happy to have my name associated with the stuff he’s got posted on the second page.
HOLY CRAP THAT IS AN EXCELLENT WEBSITE FOR 1996!
I think I speak for all us us when I ask, “IBM still has a Chief Technologist?”
#3, Yes, and they’re doing leading edge lithography at East Fishkill and who knows what kind of research at Almaden. Check out http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rdt.html.
try that link without the dot at the end…
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rdt.html
Of course some guy with an old timey mustache is going to tell us the future of chips will be in stacking them. Will they be packaged in round containers with easy-open lids that will allow us to remove the tasty chips? Oh Mr. Pringle. So predictable.
We’ve been trying to make 3D chips for a while. Lots of problems. I’m not holding my breath just yet.
lol @ #6
seriously, I don’t know why I didn’t see that at first… makes so much sense now
I can’t read this post. The image of that man annoys me too much.
Hey, get off Bernard Meyerson’s case. He used the word extensible correctly in a sentence.
That looks like the sort of headshot that you’d see on The Smoking Gun.