Samuel K. Moore

4 min read Samuel K. Moore is IEEE Spectrum’s semiconductor editor. Study authors Patrick Mercier [left] and Zixiao Lin verify the driving system on a test platform at UC San Diego. David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering Although they’re a staple of sci-fi movies and conspiracy theories, in real life, tiny flying microbots—weighed down by batteries and electronics—have struggled to get very far. But a new combination of circuits and lightweight solid-state batteries called

5 min read Samuel K. Moore is IEEE Spectrum’s semiconductor editor. IEEE Spectrum Last week at the IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), two of the biggest rivals in advanced chipmaking, Intel and TSMC, detailed the capabilities of the key memory circuits, SRAM, built using their newest technologies, Intel 18a and TSMC N2. Chipmakers’ ability to keep scaling down circuits has slowed over the years—but it’s been particularly difficult to shrink SRAM, which is