The Limits of Silicon

A glimpse at the ultimate limits of silicon integrated circuits was provided for the benefit of 804 conference registrants at COMPCON Spring 78 in San Francisco last month. But even though we may be approaching the limits of the currently most popular computer technology, our need for computational power seems limitless, both at the low end in expanding applications of microprocessors and at the high end in vast scientific computations. That, at least, appeared to be the tenor of the oneday preconference tutorial as well as a sampling of the sessions that bore directly upon the conference theme–"Computer Technology: Status, Limits, Alternatives."