Smaller, faster, cheaper. Repeat. This has been the mantra of the semiconductor industry for more than 50 years, ever since Douglas Engelbart, a computer engineer, first introduced the elegant but radical idea of “scaling” to the electronics industry in 1960. Speaking at the first International Solid-State Circuits Conference, Engelbart’s idea was deceptively simple: as you make electronic circuitry smaller, components will get faster, less expensive and less power hungry.