scottie on 10 March 2013
You're forgetting Moore's Law. All of the manufacturers listed are legally required to ensure that they meet it. If they don't meet their requirements, the UN security council is definitely going to enforce Moore's Law, and I don't think China or Russia will bother with a veto.
So either they'll have to force ahead with the die shrinks, or switch to Hell based processing, using the blood of virgins to allow for much cheaper processors.
tl;dr - There are lots of people working on this, many of them much smarter than you or I. I doubt very much that there will be years with no progress made in terms of hardware.
