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Electrical engineers at the Technische Universität München (TUM) have demonstrated a new kind of building block for digital integrated circuits. Their experiments show that future computer chips could be based on three-dimensional arrangements of nanometer-scale magnets instead of transistors. As the main enabling technology of the semiconductor industry — CMOS fabrication of silicon chips — approaches fundamental limits, the TUM researchers and collaborators at the University of Notre Dame are exploring "magnetic computing" as an alternative. They report their latest results in the journal Nanotechnology.
Technische Universität München's press release here.
Many have said that Moore's Law will run up against fundamental laws of physics, as there is a lower limit to how many atoms can be in a transistor. Allowing chip layout to go into the third dimension will definitely mitigate that, so we may continue to get more powerful computers for some time to come.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @03:12PM
A 3D lattice with cooling channels is still better connected than a 2D surface with cooling planes.
The trick is moving heat through smaller channels... all part of the development.
A better trick is superconduction, eliminating the heat problem.