“Moore’s law could once again get a reprieve, in spite of the naysayers.”
Using graphene and molybdenum disulphide, scientists in China have made a transistor gate with a length of only 0.3 nanometres, equivalent to just one carbon atom, by exploiting the vertical aspect of the device.
In 1959, scientists at Bell Labs invented the metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). This led to mass-production of transistors for a wide range of applications – including computer processors. The Intel 4,004, the first commercially produced microprocessor, debuted in 1971 and featured 2,250 transistors on a single chip, using a 10,000 nm (10 µm) fabrication process.
Since that time, the MOSFET has become the most widely manufactured device in history. Thanks to vast improvements in miniaturisation, the latest processors now contain 114 billion transistors, making them 50 million times more powerful than the Intel 4004.
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