Comment by HerbManic
17 hours ago
This is why I suspect we will be neat the upper limits of this around the late 2030's. We are just running too close to the fundamental limits. And so far there isn't anything really radical even on the horizon as a solution for this.
Aren't we reaching the point where there is no "solution" in terms of density and physical dimensions?
It's like the speed of light being a constant, or the Planck length being the smallest that can be subject to standard physics.
Quantum computing, which is a complete change in the actual physical model of computing, appears to be the only alternative.
all production ics have a flat layout with 3d transistors. the physical limit is how close can the features on one wafer get before theres too much tunneling.
there is a clear way forward with wafer stacking instead of shrinking layouts but so far we only have amd v-cache style asymmetric designs with memory stacked on top of compute. for a fully connected stack that acts like a single chip you need insane precision to align the wafers and a way to remove heat from the middle so the chips dont fry themselves.
if someone finds a way to stack cpu cores without thermal issues that will be a real revolution. huawei might be close with their logic folding but nobody knows if it really works and what the heat problems are like.