Semiconductor miniaturisation has been guided for

Position 1: Whether these innovations can sustain historical rates of performance improvement remains one of the most consequential open questions in modern engineering.

Position 2: This relentless scaling has delivered exponential gains in computing power while simultaneously driving down the cost per transistor to fractions of a cent.

Position 3: In response, the industry is pursuing alternative strategies such as three-dimensional chip stacking, silicon photonics, and the use of new channel materials like gallium nitride.

Position 4: Semiconductor miniaturisation has been guided for six decades by Moore's Law, the observation that transistor density on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.

Position 5: However, as feature sizes approach the atomic scale, quantum tunnelling and heat dissipation present physical barriers that conventional silicon architectures cannot easily overcome.