Will a New Milli-Volt Switch Replace the Transistor for Digital?
Eli Yablonovitch , UC Berkeley – department of electrical engineering and computer sciences Description/Abstract: In contemplating the headlong rush toward miniaturization represented by Moore’s Law, it is tempting to think only of the progression toward molecular sized components. There is a second aspect of Moore’s Law that is sometimes overlooked. Because of miniaturization, the energy efficiency of information processing steadily improves. We anticipate that the energy required to process a single bit of information will eventually become as tiny as 1 electron volt per function, truly indeed a molecular sized energy. Inevitably most logic functions including storage, readout, and other logical manipulations will eventually be that efficient. However there is one information-processing-function that bucks this trend. That is communication, especially over short distances. Our best projections of improvements in the short distance communication function show that it will still requir
