End of Moore's law: thermal (noise) death of integration in micro and nano electronics

The exponential growth of memory size and clock frequency in computers has a great impact on everyday life. The growth is empirically described by Moore's law of miniaturization. Physical limitations of this growth would have a serious impact on technology and economy. A thermodynamical effect, the increasing thermal noise voltage (Johnson-Nyquist noise) on decreasing characteristic capacitances, together with the constrain of using lower supply voltages to keep power dissipation manageable on the contrary of increasing clock frequency, has the potential to break abruptly Moore's law within 6-8 years, or earlier. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.