What is a Nanotransistor?
Transistors are the fundamental building blocks of most electronics, including all computers and radios. A nanotransistor is a transistor whose dimensions are measured in nanometers. For instance, a transistor with a diameter of 300 nanometers (billionths of a meter) would be a nanotransistor. Transistors are used for switching and amplifying electronic signals. When combined in the millions and billions, they can be used to create sophisticated programmable information processors, more commonly known as computers. Computing and communications companies invest hundreds of millions of dollars in research funds every year to develop smaller transistors. Miniaturizing the transistor has been the hallmark of 50 years of progress in smaller computers. In a trend known as Moore’s law, the number of transistors that engineers have been able to fit on a chip of fixed size has consistently doubled every 18 to 24 months. Thus, the entire history of computing has consisted of many dozens of doubl
