3 Directions for Moore's Law: The last few months have sent mixed signals about where chips are headed

Continuing to scale down the size of transistor features has become costlier and trickier in recent years. So much so that only four manufacturers of logic chips-GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC-were even planning to continue the multibillion-dollar effort. Those ranks have now thinned, and schedules for the remaining companies are slipping. But don't count Moore's Law out quite yet. If you've got the cash, you can now hold evidence of its power in your hand in the form of at least two smartphones. And new ways to improve performance without shrinking transistors appear to be in the offing.