9 Jul
2026
9 Jul
'26
7:06 p.m.
On Thu, 2026-07-09 at 21:20 -0400, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
I quite agree as marketing gets in the way of making
sense of the
truly
teeny-tiny. Because of quantum mechanics maybe Moore’s Law is defunct
if
only applied to a few layers. True 3D production may be the answer
but with
today’s technology this may not be possible. Yet the answer could be
stacking chips in a true 3D fashion while employing the very latest
in
cooling technology.
Caltech Magazine just announced they have developed a photonic chip
with picosecond switching time.
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/steering-light-in-a-flash-new-chip-redir…
3D stacking with intercooling was a thing about forty years ago. I
remember stories about stacking a bigger cache on a 486 or the first
pentium by putting contact pads on the top and bottom.
Happy computing.
Murray 🙂
On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 11:08 AM Paul Koning via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
> The current scaling numbers are in many ways marketing numbers
> rather
> than a reflection of the geometric realities of earlier decades.
> Early on
> a single geometry increment would apply more or less to most of the
> chip.
> That's no longer true. So to the extent that 2 nm geometry appears
> at all,
> it's only in one or a few layers, with most layers having
> significantly
> larger geometry.
>
> Nevertheless, those numbers are still mindboggling. Especially
> when you
> consider the machine (the EUV stepper) that has to project those
> patterns
> at that resolution onto the wafer, at high speed. The fact that
> it's
> possible at all is just amazing; the fact that only one company in
> the
> world is capable of doing it isn't much of a surprise.
>
> I saw a video about that technology which said that it's analogous
> to
> shooting at a dime on the moon, from earth, and asking "which side
> of the
> dime do you want me to hit?" I think that's a slight exaggeration,
> but
> hitting WIlilam Tell's apple on the moon, from earth, seems
> accurate
> enough. Yowza.
>
> The big problem at those tiny geometries is that devices are small
> enough
> that quantum mechanics is a major source of trouble. For example,
> insulators that small aren't really insulators.
>
> paul
>
> > On Jul 8, 2026, at 8:41 PM, Murray McCullough via cctalk <
> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
> >
> > We can stand in awe as classic computerists at the advancement of
> > technology: I recently read that chip technology size is at 2
> > nanometers
> > for ultra-large scale processors. In 1971 it was 10,000
> > nanometers or 10
> > microns. This is a 5000x reduction in size in 55 years. One has
> > to ask:
> Is
> > Moore’s Law still alive?
> >
> > Happy computing?
> >
> > Murray :-)
>
>