Nanoscale transistors are measured in billionths of a meter. The ASU electrical engineering professors and their students are learning how best to build these minuscule devices, investigating how they work, and trying to develop the most efficient means to make mass quantities of them. The need for computing power is everywhere. As a result, microprocessors are everywhere. Transistors are inexpensive, and the payoffs from the application of a little computer intelligence can be great.
Watches keep time accurately, with no winding.
Cars start up immediately, adjust their fuel injection to the ambient temperature and altitude, and leave only a few wisps of fumes. Back in the late 1960s, Moore said that every 18 months would see a doubling in the computational power available on a single silicon chip. Of course, Moore's Law is not a law of Nature. Moore himself has said that the cost of a fab, rather than the laws of physics, may be the limiting factor in chip development. ASU's Ultra II program is but one facet of a much larger, much more ambitious national and corporate goal.