Well everybody, remarkable as it seems old ways of doing things are being given a new lease of life , this time wet etched in silicon at the nano scale. The humbe field emission triode. Gone are the days of glowing glass tubes (sigh) well almost, one new application of these devices are flat/thin dislpays..[Special thanks to Ron H for the link]
**broken link removed**
What makes this world of "Vacuum Microelectronics" really exciting though is the basic physics, especially when one applies it to the world of computers, the speed of an electron through a vacuum device is some two orders of magnitude faster than that of silicon (roughly 10^7 cm/sec)
The silicon over-clockers will become an endangered breed!
Sadly, dont rush down to your local computer store just yet, it's all still very much experimental, though the future has a habit of sneaking up on us!.... Dont believe me? Well somebody at the DOD in the states signed a check in march for a TWO and HALF TERRA-BYTE solid state hard drive!
(solid state - all memory chips , no moving parts)