Chip Industry Sets a Plan for Life After Silicon - New York Times: "Chip Industry Sets a Plan for Life After Silicon
By JOHN MARKOFF

Nanotechnology is officially on the road map.

A handful of futuristic chip-making technologies at the atomic scale have been added to an industry planning effort that charts the future of the semiconductor manufacturing industry every two years.

The transition to a post-silicon era is forecast in a report called the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, to be issued Saturday. The report, which is produced cooperatively by semiconductor industry associations from Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States, is used by the semiconductor industry as a planning tool to determine how best to spend research and development money for new technology.

The shift away from conventional silicon transistors has become an important part of the industry's thinking, though the use of nanotechnology is not expected to replace current chip-making processes for another decade.

The urgency in moving to molecular electronics is propelled in part by a recognition that conventional technologies, despite significant advances, will not be able to sustain indefinitely the chip industry dictum, known as Moore's Law, that projects a doubling of computing power roughly every two years.

In recent years, the semiconductor industry has repeatedly found ways to make convent"