[igravious]

1nm isn't a special number just because it is 1. A nm is one billionth of a metre which itself is an arbitrary length so 1nm is a purely arbitrary cut-off.

What you should be asking is how many molecules of silicon and silicon-germanium can be packed into the spaces being talked about at the different fabrication levels of 14nm, 10nm, 7nm, 5nm, and so on.

Once you have that information then you can ask what is the smallest number of molecules that these processes can scale down to. Only then we can start asking about physical limits and more exotic processes. Are we talking about features of 50 or 40 molecules across or what?

All I know is that 1nm is not a magic number and that predictions about the demise of transistor scaling have always turned out to be wrong. My prediction is that, as unimaginable as it seems, we'll be able to scale down to the physical limits of the materials.

[davidiach]

>All I know is that 1nm is not a magic number and that predictions about the demise of transistor scaling have always turned out to be wrong. My prediction is that, as unimaginable as it seems, we'll be able to scale down to the physical limits of the materials.

This is very important to be pointed out. The burden of proof should be on the people who suggest that "this time it is different", not on those who correctly assumed that technology tends to progress in time.

[tdb7893]

Isn't a silicon atom only like .2 nm wide? My guess is that a gate needs to be at least a few atoms wide so 1nm would seem to be decently close to the literal limit for silicon.

[b34r]

According to my very unscientific googling, a silicon atom is approximately 111 picometers, or just over 1/10 of a nanometer. So if we can make stable gates with only 3-4 Si atoms, we can definitely go below 1nm.

[snovv_crash]

Don't forget you need a doping atom as well.

[vasili111]

>My prediction is that, as unimaginable as it seems, we'll be able to scale down to the physical limits of the materials.

What are these physical limits of the materials?

[sqeaky]

Whatever they are, there will be some other materials that will let get lower....

Until we are building on a single atom, and even then maybe we can go smaller.

[vasili111]

>even then maybe we can go smaller.

Can you elaborate?

[sqeaky]

We simply don't know what the smallest thing we can compute with is. A material scientist might say that the smallest silicon traces that can do the are X nanometers, then another will come along and say he is right, but we can use gallium-arsenide to get down to X-5 nanometers. And this progressive 1 upping has fueled Moore's law

There are people doing research on subatomic who think that various quarks have interesting properties for computing. This may or may not be possible. But we likely don't know yet.

[ant6n]

> we'll be able to scale down to the physical limits of the materials.

So that's like 1nm?

[halomru]

Somewhere between 0.1nm and 1nm.