which time we will see PC technology reach its limit ?

[NJ5]

highwaystar101 said:
I remembe watching a TV program about this quite some time back. It discussed a law that this person devised, I can't remember the name of the law or the person, sorry. Anyway, it stated that we should push for computers power to double every one and a half years and if we followed this rule we would reach the most powerful PCs we could manage by 2020. This meaning that each switch and whatnot is only made of a few atoms, we physically can't make them smaller. So far we have adhered to this law (more of a prediction IMO).

Anyway, this is nice to think about, but in practice things are different. Aspects such as quantum mechanics and nano-engineering all will have an effect on this. Another driving force is that of investors. We will always look for a way to have more advanced technology solely for comercial gain.

So simple answer = 2020
Real answer = Never

That's Moore's law, which is really not so much of a law, it's more like his prediction on the evolution of chip technology.

You are right that the current chip paradigm will hit a wall eventually, but as you said that's different from saying that PC technology will hit a wall. Notice that before transistors, we were using other technologies like, for example vacuum tubes or relays. Those technologies also improved exponentially until they hit a wall, but then they got replaced with newer technologies which also improved exponentially.

There are several new paradigms in the horizon which can potentially replace the current chip technology. Light-based computers are one possibility (the components communicate using light instead of electrons). 3D chips is another (several layers of transistors to allow for shorter communication paths). I'm not very knowledgeable about these new potential paradigms, but suffice to say that they are being studied, and one of them might prove to be the answer to the limits of the current paradigm in electronics.