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"People used to make similar arguments about 35mm film. Now that that's firmly surpassed"

Nanoparticle films are coming out. Gigapixel resolution in 35mm format.



Meanwhile semiconductors are already so good that we could build that today already. Nokia's 2012 PureView sensor's density was over 400MP in 35mm and that's already 4 years old. I'd bet on the digital side for this.


Eh, we can get into the picometers with analog molecular films. Got any semiconductors at that scale?


Are there any actual films that can outresolve an atom? That would be quite cool.


No, but we've got films in development where the individual grain size is just a few atoms. Got any semiconductor display techs capable of that small size?


There's nothing fundamental stopping semiconductor technology to reach those feature sizes and a fair comparison is between technologies at the same development stage. If you use the proxy of what is commercially available today CMOS sensors beat film. There are still reasons to use very large film, mostly because no one develops large enough sensors (and even if they existed cost would be very high), but the advantages are being overstated.


"There's nothing fundamental stopping semiconductor technology to reach those feature sizes"

The laws of physics most certainly are THE fundamental thing in the way. Electron leakage, current ripples at nanoscale, capacitive interference. There's a lot more involved when it comes to semiconductor technology.




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