On Some Modern Uses of the Electron in Logic and Memory
DOI: 10.1063/1.881963
The electron plays a role in many facets of modern life—lighting, heating, welding and so on. Here, I concentrate on the use of electrons primarily in logic and memory. I generally skip the early history—that of electronic tubes—and start instead with the modern integrated circuit and then go on to explore possible alternatives to the now‐dominant silicon MOSFET technology. (MOSFET stands for metal oxide semiconductor field‐effect transistor.) This approach is enforced not only by space considerations, but also by the fact that the passing years have erased triodes, power pentodes, klystrons, traveling‐wave tubes and the like from my memory. Not that they are no longer used; clones of the 6L6, EL34 and KT88 are still used in some of the best audio amplifiers. Microwaves and power applications still rely heavily on tubes. Cathode‐ray tubes are still the standard display, although their days may be numbered—at least at the large and small ends. Electron microscopes and lithography tools are, in a sense, large demountable vacuum tubes. (They are the subject of Murray Gibson’s article on page 56 in this special issue.) However, over the past 40 years, the vacuum tube has been displaced by solid‐state devices as the basis of most computer, low‐power amplifier, communications and control circuits. (See figure 1, which shows a computer processing unit.)
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References
1. A survey of where things were about five years ago can be found in Robert W. Keyes, “The Future of Solid‐State Electronics,” PHYSICS TODAY, August 1992, p. 42.
2. To go back even further, read Rolf Landauer, “The Future Evolution of the Computer,” PHYSICS TODAY, July 1970, p. 22.
3. Arecent and more optimistic view of the status of superconducting circuits may be found in Konstantin Likharev, “Superconductors Speed Up Computation,” Physics World, May 1997, p. 39.
4. A discussion of the “law” that has described the growth of integrated circuits for the last 30 years is given in Robert Schiller, “Moore’s Law: Past, Present and Future,” IEEE Spectrum, June 1997.
5. A discussion of the future of SETs is given in Kenji Taniguchi, Masaharu Kirihara, FED Journal 7, 53 (1997). (This journal is dedicated to “Future Electron Devices.”)
6. An optimistic view of the future of nano‐electronics is given by David Goldhaber‐Gordon et al., Proceedings of the IEEE 85, 521 (1997).
7. Vital perspective about extravagant claims may be achieved by reading Rolf Landauer, “Need for Critical Assessment,” IEEE Trans. on Electron Devices 43, 1637 (1996) https://doi.org/IETDAI
and Rolf Landauer, “Advanced Technology and Truth in Advertising,” Physica A 168, 75 (1990). The former contains many useful references.https://doi.org/PHYADX
More about the Authors
Alan Fowler. IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York.
