The Future Could Be 1nm Graphene
It has been predicted that existing manufacturing materials used in microchips will eventually hit a wall that no amount of R & D can overcome. As a result researchers are looking into several other technologies such as Graphene.
"When current silicon transistor technology goes below 10 nanometers in size, it's predicted it will run into the laws of physics and will no longer be able to create reliable transistors.??
Graphene, on the other hand, is already seeing working transistors in the sub-10 nanometer range. The researchers say their latest, unpublished work has used graphene to make transistors a single nanometer across."
To understand just how amazing this is, consider the amazing amount of processing power that Intel’s current Penryn family of CPUs have and imagine being able to fit dozens if not hundreds of such cores on a single die.
Sadly Graphene is still not ready for mass production at this time, but it is entirely possible that this technology will get the R&D push it needs and become mainstream in the future.
