A history of low power electronics: how it began and where it's headed

The invention of the bipolar transistor in 1948 and the integrated circuit in 1958 as well as the announcement of CMOS logic circuits in 1963 demonstrated the critical basis for modern low power electronics. Future opportunities for low power gigascale integration will be governed by a hierarchy of physical limits whose five levels can be codified as: (1) fundamental, (2) material, (3) device, (4) circuit and (5) system. Through analysis of the attributes of a hypothetical quasi-asymptotic 10 nm single electron MOSFET and its local interconnection network, it is apparent that such a device would have an unaffordably large switching error rate. However, it is feasible that low power electronics may well achieve a capability within several hundred times the switching energy of the 10 nm single electron MOSFET.