Moore's Law Needs New Material

I did not read the article, but in association with silicon, there has yet to be a major out-break into the 3rd dimension. Intel has claimed they have surmounted all the problems related to building chips upward. If they have, then the capability of silicon has just begun.

I didn't read the article yet... But I know some ways that we could overcome the present technological limits (for the maintenance of Moore's law):

1) Further evolution of silicon chips (of the present technology) through a 3-D construction (many isolated layers of circuits inside the same IC, stacked one upon the other, with interconnections between them)

2) Quantic computer-processors (based on the superimposed states of the i.e. electrons... this gives not only two logic states (high & low) but many more... )

3) I, also, suspect that brand new (much more clever) architectures might give higher speeds of processing...

4) Maybe, new organic processors could give better results, also...

New materials may be forthcoming eventually, but I agree with Vermin and G.K. -- 3D chips will take us a long way before we need to use new materials. Operational 3D chips go back as far as 2004:

http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/story/supp/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=56200232

The technology has been slow to break into commercial apps, mostly because of the cost of re-design. You can't just slap two chips atop one another and get much improvement. Nonetheless, commercial products are supposed to come out this year:

http://www.semiconductor.net/blog/200000420/post/470016847.html

Ran across a link when I was looking for the minimum gate size for transistor to allow an electron to pass http://www.ece.mtu.edu/pages/news/Bergstrom_Sep_2005.htm

seems like it might be pertinent to the discussion. The single electron gate transistor can also be in more than two discrete states.