A team of scientists at Chungbuk National University in South Korea have created a transistor that’s only 2nm in size, which happens to be the smallest in the world. By comparison, the current generation of Intel processors use 32nm transistors.
The component is referred to a quantum transistor because the application of quantum effects were crucial to the development process. And since these quantum transistors operate at room temperature, the scientists say they’re ideal for use in mobile devices.
What makes this exciting is that, as computer nerds well know, more transistors means better performance. And shrinking those transistors down meanks you can fit more on a CPU. If we can get Lilliputian logic gates to a point where they’re economically viable, Moore’s law might survive a little longer, allowing us to procrastinate on radically reconceptualising the CPU. [Yonhap via Tech-Freak Stuff]