MIT's Hybrid Microchip To Overcome Silicon Size Barrier

schliz writes "MIT researchers have successfully embedded a gallium nitride layer onto silicon to create a hybrid microchip. The method could be further developed to combine other technologies such as spintronics and optoelectronics on a silicon chip. It is expected to be commercialized in a couple of years, and allow manufacturers to keep up with Moore's Law despite today's shrinking devices."

Comments

Re:Does Moore's Law end when things get too tiny?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Smaller equals faster, and can equal lower power. Both of these are good for cellphones, and lots of other things.

More to the point, this particular advance means fewer individual chips, which means cheaper.

Re:Self-fulfilling prophecy?

[TheRaven64]

Would Intel have come as far as it did recently if Moore had never put his famous observation onto paper?

Yes. Someone else would have made a similar guess. Developing a CPU takes around 5 years. When you start, you need to know roughly how many transistors you will be able to use to make it. This depends on the market segment it will be aiming for (and the amount people are willing to pay for a chip in that segment) and the number of transistors you will be able to fit on a chip for that much money. Moore's 'law' is a good rule of thumb that lets you make a reasonable guess as to how many transistors you can fit on a chip by the time it is ready to be made. Sometimes it works, sometimes (e.g. the P4) it doesn't. Without it, Intel would have had to use some other mechanism for making guesses, but given that Moore's law is just a simple extrapolation from their past performance, that's probably what they would have used anyway.