jim wrote:well, if it continues to follow Moore's law, 2013 would be a better prediction. my only question is: who designated 16 nm as the "Transition to Nanoelectronics?" seems to be fairly arbitrary.
Well, it led from my post in the '2009 forecasts' tread, envisioning widespread 32nm technology. 16nm is half this, and also one of the semicomductor industry roadmaps 'nodes, followed by 11nm, and so on. I don't think that 16nm is the 'holy grail' of nano, I'd say that you'd have to go much smaller
than this, even. One nanometre is about 3-5 atoms across*, so to have true control of matter at the atomic level you would have to go smaller than a nanometre. However I would surmise that the smaller we go the more profound the effects will probably be, and smaller than 5nm would signal control of matter to a very significent degree.
*http://www.csa2.com/discoveryguides/nano/overview.php
There is no spoon.
