We're quickly reaching the limits of silicon-based chips, but new materials will allow us to make even faster CPUs.
One such material is the material that won the Noble Prize in physics: graphene. Graphene can increase the frequency of an electromagnetic signal, which can allow for even faster CPUs in the 500-1000 Ghz range
It's not clear that a whole CPU can actually be made at anything near 500-1000 GHz, though. That's the switching speed of the graphene transistors themselves, but the clock speed of a processor can't really feasibly be made to be equal to the switching speed of the transistors. There are silicon transistors with 50 GHz switching speeds, but the CPUs are still plateauing at around 4-5 GHz.
One such material is the material that won the Noble Prize in physics: graphene. Graphene can increase the frequency of an electromagnetic signal, which can allow for even faster CPUs in the 500-1000 Ghz range
Source: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/graphene-palacios-0319.ht...