Comment by j_m_b
1 year ago
> Computing power should get there around 2048
We may not get there. Doing some more back of the envelope calculations, let's see how much further we can take silicon.
Currently, TSMC has a 3nm chip. Let's halve it until we get to the atomic radius of silicon of 0.132 nm. That's not a good value because we're not considering crystal latice distances, Heisenberg uncertainty, etc., but it sets a lower bound. 3nm -> 1.5nm -> 0.75 nm -> 0.375nm -> 0.1875nm. There is no way we can get past 3 more generations using Silicon. There's a max of 4.5 years of Moore's law we're going to be able to squeeze out. That means we will not make it past 2030 with these kind of improvements.
I'd love to be shown how wrong I am about this, but I think we're entering the horizontal portion of the sigmoidal curve of exponential computational growth.
3nm doesn’t mean the transistor is 3nm, it’s just a marketing naming system at this point. The actual transistor is about 20-30nm or so.
Thanks for the comment. I looked more into this and it seems like not only are we in the era of diminished returns for computational abilities, costs have also now started matching the increased compute. i.e 2x performance leads to 2x cost. Moore's law has already run it's course and we're living in a new era of compute. We may get increased performance, but it will always be more expensive.