6. Emerging technologies and new computing paradigms

The concepts and paradigms introduced above are generally classical in design. However, they need to be revisited, as the next few years will see a major technological (r)evolution. The performance of current systems is saturating, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to increase their energy efficiency. There are many reasons for this: physical limitations (only a few layers of atoms are used to design today's transistors), technological limitations (design techniques, manufacturing, power dissipation), and last but not least, economic constraints (investment in production units). What will be the target technology(ies) for the next few years? It's still difficult to predict. However, major efforts have been underway for several years on a plethora of technologies: nanotubes, memristors, spintronics, nanocomponents, optoelectronics, etc. These are just a few examples.