Beyond Silicon's Elemental Logic

In the quest for speed, key parts of microprocessors may soon be made of gallium arsenide or other III-V semiconductors. Today the 8080's most advanced descendant operates 100 000 times as fast. This phenomenal progress is a direct result of the semiconductor industry's ability to reduce the size of a microprocessor's fundamental building blocks - its many metal-oxide- semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), which act as tiny switches.