Abstract
One of the remarkable technical achievements of the past 40 years has been the advances in complexity of the integrated circuit, driven primarily by an exponential rate of reduction in transistor feature sizes, thereby enabling the creation of electronic systems with steadily increasing functionality. The societal benefits in terms of economic growth from Moore's law scaling depend on a knowledge of learning curve cost reductions enabled by Moore's law. It might be possible to increase design efficiency to reduce nonrecurring engineering costs or to develop more cost-effective packaging technologies. The basic physics upon which a transistor operates might be altered 'to utilize other physical phenomena, such as electron spin, magnetic dipoles, photons, etc., to develop new classes of devices that would preserve Moore's law benefits.