It almost seems like an episode of Star Trek, doesn't it? We’re still trying to convince Intel that hardware acceleration for food replication needs to be included on the Pentium 9, but we aren't holding our breath.

Seriously though, Intel's ability to produce 30nm transistors using current lithography techniques is a significant accomplishment. Coupled with research in a few other key areas, Intel holds the key to extending Moore's first law until 2005, at the very least. Then they will only have to overcome Moore's second law concerning the economics of complex circuit manufacturing.

Will we all be multi-lingual in five years, thanks to handheld real-time translators? It's a definite possibility, but for the time being we are left to drool over the possibilities of a 400 million transistor, 10GHz CPU.

Chris Angelini
Editor