The semiconductor industry has developed almost exactly in the way that Moore’s Law predicted it would. The Law’s observation that the number of transistors on a given area of silicon would double every 18months is reflected in the transitions to new process technology nodes. So 90nm begets 65nm and so on.
Until recently, this progression to smaller and smaller nodes was not affected by small scale problems. These problems, where they were encountered, tended to be more on the macroscale than the microscale. But as the industry moves towards 45nm and smaller technologies, what may have been small problems in the past are now turning into much larger obstacles. And the offending articles are atoms.
