Comment on Moore's law:
Transistor scaling is limited to electron movement at the nanoscale and how well it can be controlled, with the Si devices we're already at the point where scaling further down will lead to leakage issues as well as problems with dopant control (the placement of individual dopants begin to matter). The convergence onto this limit was what Moor predicted, with the assumption that the progress would build on itself and keep improving. Thus the exponential growth. If you want to go beyond this you need a new device concept (which lots of people are working on, with no new clear candidate. It's a really hard physics + materials problem; you have to be able to grow these tiny tiny tiny devices).
For the 3D printers it's a beautiful merger of polymer processing technology and clever computer science. But there is no clear end-point of the scaling as there always was for the Si transistor, so improvements over time will be more similar to the car than the transistor. My guess is our lives will be affected by this somewhere in between the car and the computer.
Transistor scaling is limited to electron movement at the nanoscale and how well it can be controlled, with the Si devices we're already at the point where scaling further down will lead to leakage issues as well as problems with dopant control (the placement of individual dopants begin to matter). The convergence onto this limit was what Moor predicted, with the assumption that the progress would build on itself and keep improving. Thus the exponential growth. If you want to go beyond this you need a new device concept (which lots of people are working on, with no new clear candidate. It's a really hard physics + materials problem; you have to be able to grow these tiny tiny tiny devices).
For the 3D printers it's a beautiful merger of polymer processing technology and clever computer science. But there is no clear end-point of the scaling as there always was for the Si transistor, so improvements over time will be more similar to the car than the transistor. My guess is our lives will be affected by this somewhere in between the car and the computer.