Quote from TA;522055:
The problem with silicon is that as they push them further and further they'll run hotter and hotter and they're going to hit a limit that they can't improve anymore or they will literally melt. Instead, they'll just have to build bigger ones to "upgrade" stuff, which is really just more of the old stuff.
We've already seen this in some forms. Notice how video cards are like 5x the size they use to be? Most other technology went smaller, and that's when things were real leaps.
Yeah, but they've been saying this for years and yet smart people find ways to get more out of silicon every time. :P Not to mention, silicon is a very nice material to work with, and it's well-understood. Some people thought graphene would replace silicon in CPUs eventually, but this isn't going to happen because you cannot switch off a graphene transistor. For this reason, Intel said that they have no plans to move from silicon. You might see silicon based CPUs with some graphene components eventually, though.
As for the other "this is nothing new/great" comments, you're forgetting that just synthesizing a diamond isn't enough--the goal here is to make a perfect one so that it can be used for more applications. The old stuff just doesn't cut it, no pun intended. xd