Atlas Trail
The Physical Layer: From Transistor to Qubit
A computer is, underneath every algorithm, a machine built from controlled matter. This trail follows that physical layer from the 1947 invention that replaced the vacuum tube, through the industry law that predicted decades of its own growth, to the frontier that may eventually replace it.
Stop 1 of 5.
Fields
Computer architecture only became a practical, economically viable discipline once transistors replaced vacuum tubes from the late 1950s onward.
Stop 2 of 5.
Concepts
The semiconductor: a material whose conductivity can be precisely controlled, and the physical basis of every transistor and integrated circuit since 1947.
Stop 3 of 5.
Pioneers
Gordon Moore watched transistor counts on the integrated circuit climb and, in 1965, wrote down the trend as a law.
Stop 4 of 5.
Concepts
Moore's law: transistor density doubling on a roughly fixed schedule, the forecast that shaped the entire semiconductor industry own investment for sixty years.
Stop 5 of 5.
Fields
Quantum computing: the field that proposes replacing the transistor own binary switch with a qubit own superposition, still experimental as of the mid-2020s.
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