Integrated Circuit Technology – Past, Present, and Future

Whether you’re a student, gamer, physicist, accountant, or even a newborn baby; computers play a very integral role in all our lives. However, most people seem to take them for granted. Even though computers have only been around for about a hundred years, it’s hard to believe we once lived without them. So, how is that we went from computers the size of an apartment to computers that fit in a watch? Transistors! Transistors are the fundamental components in modern electronic devices (e.g., computer, video game, cell phone, radio and TV). The status quo in today’s society is “the more, the merrier”, but is that the case with transistors? If the past forty years are any indication, then, yes, the more transistors the merrier!
The first computer we most associate with today was invented in 1946. The E.N.I.A.C. or Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator, it was considered by most to be the first fully functional digital computer. Unlike modern computers the E.N.I.A.C. was the size of a large apartment, in part due to vacuum tubes, which were very similar to light bulbs. Imagine almost 20,000 light bulbs lit up in your house. Not only would your electric bill be a little higher than normal, but the heat generated from these tubes would be miserable. Vacuum tubes helped pave the way for the transistor, which was developed in 1954 at Bell Labs by Morris Tanenbaum. Webster’s dictionary defines a transistor as: a solid-state electronic device that is used to control the flow of electricity in electronic equipment and usually consists of a small block of a semiconductor (as germanium) with at least three electrodes. Computers are everywhere. Just because you don’t own a laptop or desktop computer doesn’t mean you don’t encounter c...

... middle of paper ...

...st triple every year. Based on the history of transistor numbers in a chip per year, it is not insane to predict by 2019 we could see over one hundred billion transistors per microchip and by 2025 well over one trillion.
From the very first computers occupying an entire room, to devices that now do virtually anything you want fitting in the palm of your hand; with the use of modern nanotechnology size will no longer be an issue. Based on the increase in numbers of transistors since 1971, I believe we should expect the number of transistors per chip to not only be in the billions but trillions within the next decade. We may just bite off more than we can chew, however, if the other components in the CPU can pull their weight, who knows what the next few decades will bring. Trillions of transistors on a single processor chip is no longer a dream, it's the expectation.