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Subject: Is there a theoretical limit to the speed of a processor?

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 14:38:07 06/06/02


What I would like to know is if there is a theoretical limit to the speed
processors can reach.

I'm not sure if this is related or not, but I'll throw this out there also. I
recall long ago hearing or reading about how the electrons passing through a
wire (or whatever medium) bang into each other and thus cause the travel time
from one end of a wire to the other end to take longer, and also causing heat to
be generated from the collisions. It went on to talk about how the smaller the
wire gets, the fewer the number of collisions, the faster the travel time, and
less heat is generated. So is the theoretical limit to processor speed when we
are able to create a wire (or whatever medium) that has the width of a single
electron, and can thus move freely with no collisions? Sorry if this has nothing
to do with my original question.

I'm not talking so much about other approaches to computing such as quantum
computing. I'm speaking in terms of our current architecture.

Russell



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