Tag: transistors
Forget for a moment the prevailing high anxiety over Moore’s Law’s fate. In the near-term – which could easily mean a decade – CMOS will remain the only viable, volume technology driving computing. Pursue alternatives? Of course, urged Josh Fryman, principal engineer and engineering manager, Intel.
The final International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) is now out. The highly-detailed multi-part report, collaboratively published by a group of international semiconductor experts, offers guidance on the technological challenges and opportunities for the semiconductor industry through 2030. One of the major takeaways is the insistence that Moore’s law will continue for some time even though traditional transistor scaling (through smaller feature sizes) is expected to hit an economic wall in 2021.
Over the last half a century, computers have transformed nearly every facet of society. The information age and its continuing evolution can be traced to the invention of the integrated circuit and the reliable progression of smaller feature sizes – enabling generation after generation of smaller, faster and cheaper microprocessors. But now that foundational trend of modern computing, Read more…
With transistor scaling slated to come up against some fundamental limits over the next five to seven years, chip designers are hot on the trail of technologies to extend the exponential advances described by Moore’s law. One of the most promising areas of R&D involves stacking layers of logic and memory into 3D chips. The implementation Read more…
With silicon-based processors facing some inexorable limits, scientists are looking elsewhere to keep computing on its exponential growth track. One potential alternative that is getting some traction is magnet-based computing. A group of electrical engineers at the Technische Universität München (TUM) is studying the feasibility of using miniature magnets as the building block for integrated Read more…
The effect of five decades of exponential progress with silicon chips doubling in speed every couple years as observed by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore in 1965 cannot be overstated. As silicon-based transistors push against the limits of physics, the death of Moore’s law could pack a devastating blow to the industry and even the global Read more…
If you’re looking for a great video describing the essentials of Moore’s law in under 10 minutes, perhaps for your non-HPC friends and family, look no further. With a direct, easy-to-follow delivery, Professor Derek McAuley with the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham lays out the elements of chip design and manufacturing Read more…
Another computing expert has weighed in on Moore’s Law predicted demise. Speaking at a press roundtable on Wednesday in San Francisco, Henry Samueli, co-founder, chairman and CTO of Broadcom, said that the famous observation that ushered in five decades of ever smaller, faster and cheaper chips will not hold out much longer. This is yet Read more…
Silicon photonics is in the spotlight again, being pitched by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Micron Technology Inc. as a potential Moore’s Law extender. The technology of silicon photonics refers to using light, instead of electrical wires, to enable silicon-based transistors to communicate on a single chip. Read more…
As transistors reach the limits of miniaturization, it is only a matter of time until Moore’s Law runs out of steam. The latest expert to weigh-in says Moore’s Law will expire in 2020 at the 7nm node.
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