Lecture 1 homework

Remember, it's also always an option to do a short paper instead surveying some of this lecture's readings of your own choosing, or another of other types of short papers, or suggest your own project.  Please refer to the general assignment guidelines.
  1. [15 points] Literature research (race assignment).  I mentioned this in class.  In my graphs of minimum horizontal feature sizes (line widths) in commercially-available semiconductor technology from lecture 1, I am missing data for years between 1959 and 1995.  For this assignment, do some literature research (using the library and/or the web) to try to locate data for at least 10 additional years (the more, the better).  Add the data to my spreadsheet and update the chart.  Write a report describing how the data was found, showing the new chart, and citing all your sources.  If you obtained the data from multiple sources, you should make it clear which data points came from which sources.
  2. [3 points each] Analysis.  For any of the last 4 graphs in lecture 1, do some curve-fitting work to find an analytical formula for the curve shown.  Using a spreadsheet (such as Excel) or a mathematics package (Matlab, Maple, or Mathematica, all of which are available from CISE Unix accounts), plot your curve, and draw the points from the graph shown in lecture superimposed on it.  (a) If doing the "calculations per second per $1000 of computing" graph, solve your formula to find the year that performance exceeds 1016 ops/sec, one estimate of the raw computational power of the human brain.   (b) If doing the feature size graph, solve your formula to find the year when the projected feature size would reach 1 Angstrom (10-10 m), which is about the radius of a hydrogen atom.  (c) If doing the energy graph, solve your formula to find the year when the energy to switch a transistor would reach 1 kT.  Turn in your results and all of your analytical work, neatly presented.  You can do multiple of the above (a-c), for 3 points each.
  3. [7 points] Short paper.  Obtain and read all of Moore's original articles on Moore's Law, listed in the readings.  (I have them all.)  Write your own paper summarizing his work.
  4. [7 points] Short paper.  Read several recent articles (from the last two years) relating to Moore's Law; you can probably find many on the web.  Write a report summarizing these articles.  Cite your sources, and relate the articles to things you learned in lecture.
  5. [5 points] Small project.  This is like #1 above, except instead of filling in past data points, adjust the present and future data points using projections from the 2001 edition of the ITRS roadmap.  My present chart is based on the 1999 and earlier editions.
  6. [7 points] Short paper.  I don't have too many suggestions on the reading list yet for reading materials reviewing the present status of physics and the prospects for its completion.  You may want to find some others.  Read some and review them.  Give your own opinion on the prospects for future physics.  Do you think that some of the currently-accepted basic physical principles on which this course is based might someday be overthrown?  Why or why not?