Silicon Silicon all the way!!!

As I work in a semiconductor industry a posting on Silicon...

Every1 has heard of ICs - those small 'things' in any electronic gadget. Those who are informed know that these ICs are made up of silicon - the semiconductor material.

The company i work for, works on cutting edge technology , striving hard to meet the unproven but globally accepted Moore'slaw - the no. of transistors integrated in a given area will double every eighteen months. Even I play a simple role in achieving the inevitable.

One fine day when i was contemplating about my future, my roadmap in the company , my career I stumbled across this thought :
Since we are actually shrinking the silicon every 18 yrs ( 65 nm as of now), what will happen once we hit the physical limit of silicon.

The IT revolution is not going to come to end just because we have hit the silicon limit, IT has grown beyond that.I checked this with my superviser too who hadnot thought about it. After questioning other ppl i finally found solace in Google. When I googled this is what i found.

There are lots of research happening to find the next bext thing once the limit is reached. The two most important ones are :

o Optical computing.
Using light to process the data, as of now we use light to carry data, using the interference property of light we can build logic circuits. Check the link at the bottom of the page.

o Quantum Computing.
Using atom as the storing element. If an Electron in an atom is in a energised state, it is logic 1 and the stable atom is logic zero. If this materialises it will be a quantum leap in the area of computing since photons are faster than electrons and the volume of storage will be gigantic.

The research is goin on in both the areas, but nothing concrete yet. But things look very bright in the future.

Source : Silicon