Semiconductor industry earthquake: Moore's law will expire in five years

After more than 50 years of continuous miniaturization, transistor volume will cease to shrink in 2021. This is the conclusion of the latest 2015 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), which means Moore's Law will no longer be valid at that time.

The road map released earlier this month believes that after 2021, the company will continue to shrink the transistors in the microprocessor and it will no longer be economical. Chip makers will use other means to increase transistor density, that is, from horizontal to vertical. Layer circuit.

Some people believe that this change may mean another death toll in the death of Moore's Law. Even worse, this is the last ITRS roadmap.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), which represents IBM, Intel, and other companies and is a key sponsor of the ITRS, stated that the decrease in industry participation and the increased interest of companies in other programs is the main reason for the current situation. SIA will work with Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) to identify projects for government and industry-funded projects that should be prioritized for R&D. Other ITRS members will participate in the development of a new road map.

According to Dan Hutcheson, an analyst at VLSI Research in the United States on the IEEE Spectrum website, this change in the roadmap seems to be a irrelevant administrative change, but for the entire industry, it is tantamount to a “major destruction”. Or earthquake."

Moore's Law and ITRS Roadmap

In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed that the integration of components in integrated circuits can double every 12 months. After refining and simplifying the data, this phenomenon is called "Moore's law": the number of transistor per unit cell doubles every 12 months. In 1975, Moore updated Moore's Law to increase the semiconductor industry's development cycle from 12 months to 24 months.

However, chip development is a complex process that requires the use of equipment, software, and raw materials from multiple companies. The goal described by Moore's Law cannot rely on fluke.

In order to ensure that manufacturers develop a coordinated timetable based on Moore's Law, the entire industry follows a common roadmap for technology development. In 1992, SIA, an industry organization composed of Intel, TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and IBM, began publishing this roadmap. In 1998, SIA cooperated with similar organizations in other regions of the world and established the "International Semiconductor Technology Roadmap" (ITRS) organization.

Changing times

However, the difficulties and costs faced in the pursuit of compliance with Moore's Law have also led to a significant consolidation of the industry. Hutcheson estimates that 19 companies in the world had developed and produced the most advanced transistor logic chips in 2001, but only 4 are left today: Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries. IBM previously belonged to this rank, but its chip factory recently sold to GlobalFoundries.

Hutcheson said that these companies have their own roadmap and can also communicate directly with their equipment and raw material suppliers. In addition, the competition between them is extremely fierce:

They do not want to sit in a room and talk about what their needs are.

It's a bit like just having fun at the beginning of a football game, and it's cruel to the playoffs.

ITRS chairman Paolo Gargini stated that "the entire industry has changed." Semiconductor companies that no longer produce their own chips now rely on foundries to bring them advanced technology. In addition, chip buyers and designers such as Apple, Google and Qualcomm increasingly dominate the requirements for future chip configurations. Gargini said:

Once the semiconductor companies decided on the characteristics of their semiconductor products, this is no longer the case.

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External Cable Assembly Wire:It is used to transmit data, audio, video, etc. it is a kind of electric energy or signal transmission device, which is usually composed of several wires or groups of wires.

External cable assembly line: used for connection, conduction, current and signal transmission of machine equipment, instrument, electronic and electrical peripheral equipment


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