The future of nanocomputing

Projections that show the end of CMOS scaling will occur around 2016 have spurred interest in emerging alternative technologies, particularly nanotechnologies, that promise to extend Moore's law beyond 2016. The semiconductor industry has already entered the nanotechnology world: In 2000, it introduced the 130-nm node with a 70-nm gate-length feature size, followed in 2002 by the 90-nm node featuring a critical dimension of 50 nm. Industry leaders see new scalable technologies emerging from the novel alternative architectures and devices being proposed today that will take us through multiple processor generations for another 30 years or so. Reviewing the lessons learned in the semiconductor industry over the past few decades helps us understand the emerging technologies and suggests some criteria for bringing current research efforts into the realm of high-volume manufacturing.