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_username_on Are processors pushing up against the limits of physics?

Just a side not that light in other medium than air travels slower. It's not 300k km/h but ~200k km/h in FR4 microstrip (6"/ns where 1ns is equivalent to 1GHz clock).

_username_on Are processors pushing up against the limits of physics?

Intel paid ASML ~$4.1 billion to deliver 10nm lithography. That was ~ 1.5yrs ago (http://www.intc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=690165). ASML stock is a good indicator what's happening in this business.

Intel has running 14nm which is 16% better on SRAM cell than 16nm TSMC.

_username_on Hardware associative array

It's more complex than that. TCAMs are very expensive (silicon area wise - they use 13 transistors per bit cell) and it's not possible to store entire routing tables in them. Also more IPv6 addresses are present which consume 4x more space than IPv4. All this leads to different scenarios i.e algorithmic TCAMs.