Conclusion

The microelectronics industry, and with it a portion of the U.S. economy, faces a critical hurdle as the physical limits of CMOS technology draw ever closer. Moore's Law has been critical to its rapid growth as both a metronome and a road map, but an S-curve transition to molecular electronics may create a plateau more than a decade from now in the steady improvement seen over the past decades. During the transition, technologies like photonics and new, fault-tolerant architectures will still increase computing efficiencies, although likely not at a pace commensurate with Moore's Law.