Navigation for Nanoscience Technology:

History of Miniaturization

topics

Nanotechnology: Working with things that are really, really small

Example:

  • What is Rain?
    Large drops of water
  • What is Fog?
    Very fine particles of water (.3 micron)
  • What Happens?
    Fog bends light and changes ability to see through but made of the same material.


Why is Small So Good?

  • Faster
  • Lighter
  • Can get into small spaces
  • Cheaper
  • More energy efficient
  • Different properties at very small scale

Timeline

  • 1904: Vacuum tube diode invented
  • 1947: Transistor invented
  • 1954: First transistor radio (four transistors)
  • 1958: Integrated circuit invented (multiple transistors on a wafer)
  • 1967: First hand calculator (six digit numbers, add, subtract, multiply, divide)
  • 1971: Intel introduces computer on a chip (2,300 transistors over 3–4 mm)
  • 2007: IBM's POWER6 microprocessor (790 million transistors, 4.7 billion operations/sec.)
  • Feb. 2008: Intel's Itanium microprocessor (2 billion transistors)
  • 2008 and beyond: Faster and smaller

 
 
 
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