Moore's Law, as chip manufacturers generally refer to it today, is coming to an end, according to a recent research paper.
Granted, that end probably won't come for about two decades, but Intel researchers have recently published a paper theorising that chipmakers will hit a wall when it comes to shrinking the size of transistors, one of the chief methods for making chips that are smaller, more powerful and cheaper than their predecessors.
Manufacturers will be able to produce chips on the 16-nanometre manufacturing process, expected by conservative estimates to arrive in 2018, and maybe one or two manufacturing processes after that, but that's it.
"This looks like a fundamental limit," said Paolo Gargini, director of technology strategy at Intel and an Intel fellow. The paper, titled Limits to Binary Logic Switch Scaling -- A Gedanken Model, was written by four authors and was published in the Proceedings of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) in November.
Although it's not unusual for researchers to theorise about the end of transistor scaling, it's an unusual statement for researchers from Intel, and it underscores the difficulties chip designers currently face. The size, energy consumption and performance requirements of today's computers are forcing semiconductor makers to completely rethink how they design their products and are prompting many to pool design with research and development.
Resolving these issues is a major goal for the entire industry. Under Moore's Law, chipmakers can double the number of transistors on a given chip every two years, an exponential growth pattern that has allowed computers to get both cheaper and more powerful at the same time.
Mostly, the trick has been accomplished through shrinking transistors. With shrinkage tapped out, manufacturers will have to find other methods to keep the cycle going.
These issues will likely be widely discussed this week, when the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors is unveiled in Taiwan. The ITRS, which is comprised of several organisations, including the Semiconductor Industry Association, outlines the challenges and rough timetable for the industry for 15 years. A new version of the plan will be released in Taiwan on 2 December.
Still, Gargini said, researchers are exploring a variety of ideas, such as more efficient use of electrons or simply making bigger chips, to surpass any looming barriers. Other researchers likely will dispute these conclusions.
"We cannot let physics beat us," he said, laughing.
Talkback
Michael
"Intel sees Moore's Law wall ahead " ....i t depends on who is looking. Tunneling Vision? © :-)
The physics won't beat us, just Intel's definition of the physics problem.
Maybe the answer is to think outside of existing electron based technology. An example is quantum level switching devices - as described in one of your own interesting features earlier this year. Maybe Intel don't have access to the patents...
Brian - a physicist by training.
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Thursday 25th September 2003
New spin on transistor heralds chip revolution
Rupert Goodwins
ZDNet UK
September 24, 2003, 17:05 BST
A fundamental breakthrough in solid-state physics looks set to drastically improve computing technology
A fundamental breakthrough in solid-state physics has been announced this week by Swedish researchers. By adding manganese to an existing semiconducting material, zinc oxide, Professors Venkat Rao and Borje Johansson at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm say that they have added magnetic properties without destroying its previous capabilities.
Although this has been done before with other materials, most notably gallium arsenide, this is the first time a substance has been produced that will work at room temperature. Circuits made with the new material have the potential to run hundreds of times faster or store thousands of times more information than current electronic designs, the researchers say.
Professor Rao told ZDNet UK that "Zinc oxide is already widely used in optoelectronics and mobile phones, so it should be only two to three years before new devices are produced." Smaller, faster versions of zinc oxide's existing repertoire of optical modulators, detectors, lasers and so on should be easy to produce. The biggest win, however, will be in the use of the compound for spintronic transistors, quantum devices that until now have been limited to laboratory demonstrations.
Spintronic transistors have the potential to be much faster and dissipate much less power than conventional designs because they set and test the spins of electrons -- the fundamental component of magnetism -- without needing an electric current.
"You can get much closer to the speed of light," said Rao, "because you're not moving charge around." The logic state of a spintronic device is also non-volatile, and stays when power is removed. "It's like having a hard disk without the magnetic surface," Rao said, "and you can have very high density at low power." He said that because semiconductor engineering is so highly advanced, it should only be five to ten years before spintronic devices appeared: "But don't ask me exactly when. That would be like asking a newly-wed woman when the first baby was expected."
Spintronics is under intensive investigation at many other establishments, because of its potential for thousand-fold increases in memory storage, power saving and device speed. IBM is investigating MRAM -- magnetic memory -- based on the technology, and Stanford University recently announced the discovery of an 'Ohm's Law' for spin. That predicts that room temperature devices could effectively manipulate electron spin with little or no power loss at all. "In maybe a ten year timeframe, spintronics will be on a par with electronics," Professor Shoucheng Zhan of Stanford said in a statement.
I consider the views expressed in this headline to be rather short on the fundamentals of electron dynamics.
Fundamental scientists like me do not believe Moore's Law is coming to an end. I will say it is moving into its next phase. The intellectual or digital Moore Phase.
A roadmap for Moore's Law is being designed and will be made available to those Intel Engineers, who regretably could not see beyond thermionic emission.