this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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EE major here. All the equations in the third panel are classical electrodynamics. To explain the semiconductors needed to make the switches to make the gates in the second picture, you really need quantum mechanics. You can get away with "fudged" classical mechanics for approximate calculations, but diodes and transistors are bona fide quantum mechanical devices.
But it's also magic lol.
Quantum Physics Postdoc here. Although technically correct this is also somewhat misleading. You need the band structure of solids, which is due to quantization and Pauli exclusion principle. The same quantum mechanics that explains why we did those strange electron energy levels for atoms in highschool. The majority of quantum mechanics, however, is not required: coherence, spin, entanglement, superposition. In the field we describe semiconductors as quantum 1.0, and devices that use entanglement and superposition (i.e. a quantum computer) as quantum 2.0, and smear everything else in-between. This
You're talking the old CPU designs, not the current ones fighting tunneling effects or the work-in-progress photonics & 2D hybrids.
No, I am not sure that I am.
Photonic processing, whilst very cool and super exciting, is not a quantum thing... Maxwells equations are exceedingly classical.
As for the rest it's transistor design optimisation, enabled predominantly by materials science and ASMLs EUV tech I guess:), but still exploits the same underlying 'quantum 1.0' physics.
Spintronics (which could be what you mean by 2D) is for sure in-between (1.5?), leveraging spin for low energy compute.
Quantum 2.0 is systems exploiting entanglement and superposition - i.e. qubits in a QPU (and a few quantum sensing applications).