What Is Moore's Law?
On April 19, 1965, at the invitation of Electronics (magazine), Moore, one of the founders of Intel, published a famous paper on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of "Electronics" magazine. The core point of view is: in the next ten years, Under the premise of the same price, the number of components that can be accommodated per unit area of the most advanced integrated circuits will increase at a rate of approximately doubling every year. In 1975, Moore submitted a paper at the annual academic meeting of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). According to the actual situation at that time, the growth rate of "doubling the crystal density every year" was re-examined and revised. It was changed to "transistor density doubles every two years", and was later revised to "transistor density doubles every 18 months". Since then, Moore's viewpoint has been widely circulated in the industry and accepted by people. This is the famous Moore's law.
Understanding Moore's Law
Moore's Law is the experience of Intel founder Gordon Moore. Its essence is prediction, not the law of natural science. Since it is a prediction, it is only accurate or not, not right or wrong. At the same time, it does not require theoretical support, and commercial support is sufficient. This is why Moore's Law is mentioned more times than physical laws, such as Joule's Law, Kepler's Three Laws, and Kirchhoff's Three Laws.
I don't know who was the first to translate this view into "Moore's Law". In the "Oxford English Dictionary", English law has definitions such as "law, law, law" in the Oxford dictionary. Here, I personally think it is more appropriate to call it "Moore's Law".
In the 50 years since the birth of Moore's Law, it has accurately predicted the development of chip manufacturing technology. Even Gordon Moore himself was surprised by this. After all, when Moore's Law was born, it only predicted the development of semiconductor technology in the next ten years. develop. In 2007, Intel launched the Tick-Tock strategy. A Tick-Tock cycle represents a process and architecture update every 2 years. That is, in the year of Tick, Intel upgrades the process; in the year of Tock, it upgrades the microarchitecture of the chip. This strategy has allowed Intel to maintain a leading edge in the industry for nearly 10 years. It was not until recent years that Intel was dubbed a "toothpaste factory" by users due to the slow process development. Intel had to propose the IDM2.0 model, which distributed part of its production capacity to other design companies to obtain income, and at the same time sent the manufacturing of high-end chips directly to TSMC. , in order to enhance the competitiveness of Intel products.
After the process technology enters below 10 nanometers, process research and development is becoming more and more difficult, and research and development investment is also increasing. Moore's Law is slowing down at a speed visible to the naked eye. But generations of semiconductor researchers are still trying their best to continue Moore's Law, from Planar FETto FinFET, to Gate-all-around FET(GAAFET) and Multi-Bridge Channel FET(MBCFET), as shown in Figure 1. It can be seen that the transistor has moved from a plane to a three-dimensional, thereby solving the problems of leakage, power consumption, and weak current control ability caused by the shrinking of the process. The new transistor structure also makes it possible for the chip process to be lowered to below 3 nanometers. Therefore, Professor Chenming Hu, who invented the fin field effect transistor, was once called "the man who saved Moore's Law".
Figure 1
The essence of Moore's Law is the prediction of the development of the chip process, rather than constraints, but this does not affect the profound impact of Moore's Law on the semiconductor industry. In the wave of semiconductor development, Moore's Law is like a wind vane, predicting the iterative process of chip technology, so it is often mentioned and talked about by semiconductor people.
Moore's Law's Impending End
From design to production of integrated circuits, the baton is aimed at profit. Chip integration is doubled, cost is halved. From the perspective of system integrators, performance is doubled, device integration is doubled, and price is halved. In the eyes of consumers, from mobile phones to PHS to smart phones, more and more Wumart cheap. Chip system integration products are consumer electronics represented by PCs, mobile phones, tablets, etc. If PHS(Personal Handphone System) has always been PHS until now, and there were no other alternative products, then the market for PHS would have been saturated long ago, with overcapacity and unsustainable enterprises. In fact, a new generation of chips will be released every two years on average, doubling the integration level and halving the cost. Make consumer electronics more and more cheap, stimulate consumption. Intel produces one generation of products every two years, five generations of products in ten years, and can earn five times. Before the products on the market are saturated, even if the next generation of products has been developed, they will not be put into the market until the products on the market have made Mary a clean profit. Therefore, chips must double the integration level every two years (one and a half years) and halve the price to cater to the market. If the market is too slow, the market will be saturated, and the company's income and expenditure will be unbalanced, which will cause financial problems. Too fast, one is that this chip does not maximize its profitability, and the other is that the technical research and development cannot leapfrog the accumulation between generations. After Moore's Law expires, the integrated circuit industry will become a traditional manufacturing industry, and the driving force for profitability will change to new applications, such as applications that demand the Internet of Things and so on.
From chip design to manufacturing, technological progress has doubled the integration level and halved the cost. A wafer(elettronica) needs to repeat dozens of processes to process chips, and the cost of each process is not small. The reduction of chip size makes the number of chips on a wafer more and more, and the average cost per chip is reduced. Doubling the performance requires higher integration of each chip, so that more functions can be satisfied at a higher frequency under the requirement of low power consumption. Therefore, the number of transistors on the chip is integrated to hundreds of millions, and the feature size of each transistor is continuously reduced from 180/130/90/65/45/22/14/7nm, among which SOI FINFET Strained Si half-floating gate, etc. are proposed and other technologies. Shrinking dimensions make quantum effects an important background consideration for transistor design. New materials and new principles have become breakthroughs in Moore's Law. For example, the single electron spin state is used to store 0/1 to realize digital calculation. For the process, the most important step is the lithography machine and the corresponding photoresist. The price of developing a set of lithography equipment is very expensive. In fact, the entire semiconductor manufacturing cost is very expensive, which is why most countries and companies cannot Reasons to easily join the semiconductor manufacturing industry
The above is almost known, and it can probably answer why Moore's Law is becoming more and more unsustainable. First, from an economic point of view, more advanced manufacturing processes require unimaginable investment. It is difficult for companies and investors to bear such risks, and the chips produced may not necessarily be able to recover costs, let alone profits. The second is at the technical level, several major limitations of advanced manufacturing processes - lithography (including lithography equipment, photoresist, etc.), quantum effects in device physics, interconnect parasitic effects, power consumption, delay, packaging, etc. .So it's only a matter of time before Moore's Law ends
Frequently Asked Questions
Is moore's law dead?
Moore's Law is an empirical law of interpenetration from capital operation to engineering to science, and there is no strict and accurate expression. Although Moore's Law is coming to an end, scientists are not sure when it will really be the limit.
When will moore's law end?
Moore's Law is an empirical law of interpenetration from capital operation to engineering to science, and there is no strict and accurate expression. Although Moore's Law is coming to an end, scientists are not sure when it will really be the limit.
Is moore's law still valid?
Although the growth of semiconductor technology has slowed down, Moore's Law has not yet expired. In recent years, with the emphasis on semiconductors around the world and the increase in investment in semiconductor technology research and development, the semiconductor industry will have more vitality. Moore's Law may be confirmed again. In the future, how, no one knows
Related Articles
We are a professional distributor of electronic components, providing a wide range of electronic products, saving you a lot of time, effort and cost through our meticulous order preparation and fast delivery service.
Share this post
