Beyond CMOS -- The Semiconductor Industry's Nanoelectronics Research Initiative

The tremendously powerful scaling of transistors, that has enabled Moore's Law for the past forty years, can not continue forever. Some of the reasons, such as the atomistic nature of matter, are obvious. Others are less obvious and will be briefly reviewed before some of the potential alternatives to charge based logic will be analyzed. Such an analysis had the semiconductor industry initiate a Nanoelectronics Research Initiative. The current status of this program will be reviewed