Busy Chips

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When transistors replaced hot and fragile vacuum tubes in the late 1940's they revolutionized the production of electronic equipment.  In the 1960's, the development of silicon chips brought much faster, smaller, cooler devices, which required less power.  Since then micro-chips have doubled their capacity almost every year, putting more and more luggage into ever smaller packages.

Now the size limitations of silicon chips are beginning to hinder progress.  The electronics industry is no longer satisfied to pack mere millions of components into a chip.  Their aim is to develop materials which will enable them to make chips capable of holding billions of components.

Substances like gallium arsenide and carbon nano-tubes, although harder to make and handle, have the potential to be a hundred times smaller than silicon chips, while at the same time performing even more efficiently.

Researchers are now on the verge of developing much faster optical chips using light rather than an electric current.  Optical chips generate virtually no heat and are immune to electrical interference.  These new chips should enable the building of miniature micro-chip lasers that can both amplify electric current and emit a beam of single wavelength light.  The use of such double duty micro chips will significantly speed up the performance of computers.

So next time, remember that in electronics it really is true that the best things come in very small packages.