Moore’s law will likely begin to slow down to a three-year cycle in the next decade and require companies to adopt alternative technologies.

Some say the ability to shrink transistors will start to become problematic by around 2010. Others, such as Intel’s director of technology strategy, Paolo Gargini, paint a more gradual picture. Around 2015, they say, manufacturers will start to move toward hybrid chips, which combine elements of traditional transistors with newfangled technology such as nanowires. A full conversion to new types of chips may not occur until the 2020s.

From a theoretical point of view, silicon transistors could continue to be shrunk until about the 4-nanometer manufacturing generation, which could appear about 2023. At that point, the source and the drain, which are separated by the transistor gate and gate oxide, will be so close that electrons will drift over on their own. When that happens, transistors will lose their reliability, because it will be impossible to control the flow of electrons and hence the creation of 1s and 0s.