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To: Zeev Hed who wrote (9636)	11/27/1997 8:56:00 PM
From: Joseph G.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18056

Zeev, these are all not facts, but fantasies, taken perhaps from popular magazines, like Time, where ignorant journalists write up something they have no idea about with as little effort as possible. (i) it is extremely well known that interatomic distances are 1 to 2 Angstrem, not 5 A. Si or not Si does not matter much in this regard. It is also extremly well known that they are irrelevant to ultimate transistor size, as other effects make it impossible to scale current technology below several hundreds of interatomic distances. (ii) IBM is not working on interatomic hopping, as such thing does not exist in nature. (iii) The world could not reduce defence expenduteres by $1,000B as that was sum total of all such expenduteres, and since now they are not exactly zero, the change was less than total. US reduced defence expenduteres by some 20%. (iv) It is definetly not a fact that reducing defence expenduteres must, no matter what, from general considerations, improve "general wealth". (v) Motion of China is NOT a fact, and that whatever Marx wrote is correct is NOT a fact. (vi) Former SU GDP is way less than it was ten years ago, the country is falling apart. You can see any fantasies you want, but to call them "fact" is self-delusion. And to sell them to others as "facts" is irresponcible. And the point is not if there is scientific and technological progress, there is always, because it is cumulative. Technology, howevere, does not garanty economic progress, much less political progress. And, as everybody should know, US Steel peaked out in 1956, and GM peaked out in 1967, and IBM peaked out in 1973 - and it does not mean there is less steel, or cars, or computers produced, or that they are worse. Joe

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (9636)	11/27/1997 9:44:00 PM
From: Joseph G.	Respond to of 18056

Zeev, just to clarify, in case you care. Lattice constant of Si is 5.4 A, but there are several atoms in the lattice cell, so that interatomic distance is 2.3 A. Joe

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (9636)	11/27/1997 11:38:00 PM
From: Elllk	Respond to of 18056

Zeev and Joe This whole area of discussion about how long Moore's Law will apply is a fascinating one in which none of us can do more than make guesses. I seems likely that before the law fails it will go through a periods of both waxing and waning, so if it is waning for now that may very well be while temporary until new breakthroughs in the tools of lithography are achieved. It is considered that the limit is 0.1 to 0.015 micron because at these submicron widths the walls of pathways become bumpy with molecules and increasingly stronger electrical fields are thrown off which interfere with performance and also chips throw off heat at a rate, relatively speaking, of about 10x the rate of a stove surface which sends electrons tunneling through insulating walls threatening to create short circuits. So it is thought that these dimensions may provide the unbreachable physical wall (and a limit of 10-25 years). If Moore's Law is temporarily waning, Bajarin thinks that by 2000 it will be waxing and the complexity of chips will be doubling every four to five months which would speed development of chips but shorten the time left in the chip revolution. Moore, tongue in cheek, compared projections of the growth of the semiconductor industry and the world gross domestic product showing that the former would eclipse the latter by 2040. Meindl estimated the the limit of chip miniaturization at 10 to the 25 power and the Chip Performance Index at 10 to the 18 power which would limit chip development to 10 to the 6 power of development or about another 20 years. None of this is certain, in fact very little is certain. Carinalli says that most companies in the industry are just trying guess the right direction for the next near or so. Dan Lynch says we will all be dead by the time Moore's Law is played out. But the currently percieved technological limits may be no greater than the many limits that have been broken through in recent decades. Just as advances in astronomy have led to an almost daily reassessment of the size of the universe, so advances in physics have led to increasing estimates of the density of the subatomic realm. It may not merely be that nature abhors a vacuum but that there is no such thing as a vacuum. The Standard Model of 12 particles of matter can now be explained as an exchange of messenger particles. During some events messenger particles materialize and travel through space (within timescales of <10 to the power of -21 seconds) but at other times they may remain entirely hidden within the interacting system. In that form they are "virtual particles." Every particle, matter or messenger, appears to display a virtual form. Their existence has been demonstrated by the "Casimir effect." Virtual particles do not merely mediate forces, they may be what causes matter to have mass. Higgs suggested that mass may have to with an aspect of nature (now called "the Higgs field" wherein reside the messenger particles which evoke the quality of mass when interacting with other particles. The interaction is precisely what allows the particles to be seen and manipulated. Thus, while we could create a kind of vacuum by removing all of the detectable messenger particles, we would never be able to remove the virtual particles. If the above is correct, there is no such thing as empty space and this would apply down to the scale of the Planck length of 10 to power of -33 beyond which quantum physics takes over. It has been established that space-time is quite smooth down to the scale of the electron or 10 to the power of -20 cm, and further, probably down to the Planck length of 10 to the power of -33 cm. This could provide a fairly stable and dense subatomic realm within which microchip develpment can continue to dramatically develop and sustain advances of microchip technology (possibly acceleration of Moore's Law) far below the currently forseen limit of 0.015 micron length. Further, as far as we know, what would be the next level of the ultimate limit of of measurment, the Planck length and Planck time (10 to the power of -44 seconds) could, in turn, give way and yeild a relatively stable sub-Planckian realm, as opposed to the alleged foam laced with distortions of space=time, and thereby provide another promising level of the physical realm and period of time through which Moore's Law could continue to prevail. I side with Dan Lynch guess that we will all be dead before Moore's Law is played out. Larry