The End Of The Innovation Road for CMOS

Elledan writes "According to this EE Times article, CMOS technology (also used to create CPUs with) is getting near the moment when we will no longer be able to create smaller structures with it. With the date for this moment set around 2012 and with no replacement technology in sight, this issue might become a real problem in the near future, as the article explains."

Comments

Clueless NY Times Editors

[bertok]

But whatever technology is to take the place of the venerable MOSFET -- be it molecular structures, carbon nanotubes, MEMS, or other next-generation technologies -- must be invented now and developed full-bore over the next decade in order to be ready in time, Buss said.

MEMS isn't an electronic system like MOSFET or CMOS, it's a method for making mechanical systems out of silicon. Oops.

Is this really a bad thing?

[colmore]

I don't think anyone is suggesting that this is going to be the end of increased CPU speed, just the end of the usefulness of a certain technology.

I think perhaps the best thing that could happen would be about a five year freeze on increasing CPU power, so that the burden would again fall on the programmers to write good fast code.

In the past five years, CPUs have increased in speed tenfold, but computers have gained little apparent speed (applications don't load any quicker, OSes don't boot any faster) and certainly haven't gotten *ten times* more useful.

We have all these extra cycles, and all we can think to do with them is write slow, clunky but pretty window managers. (A criticism I lay against, MS, Apple, and OS) A pause in the mad rush for speed might give some time to think of what to *do* with all that power. DivX is a pretty specific use for so much general purpose hardware.

Prediction: Valid for 20 years

[petis]

According to this paper (pdf) entitled "Scaling of Electronics" from 2001, the following conclusions are drawn:
* Moore's law will hold for 20 more years.
* There is a potential performance increase of 10000x with current CMOS-technology
* The minimum gate: needs 12(!) electrons to switch.

We'll see. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for CMOS to hit the roof though.

Re:Prediction: Valid for 20 years

[svirre]

The primary obstacle for continuing develompment on our current path will likely not be technological but rather financial.

New fabs are increasing in cost at a dramatic rate, unless the semiconductor market increases it's growthrate substantially we'll likely see that while technologically possible some next stage development of CMOS will be economically infeasible as a fab won't be able to recover the cost of building it over it's lifetime.

We are not there yet, and not likely to get there for another ten years, but if present developments continue we will get there some 10-20 years from now.

Re:Quantum Computing, here we come!

[dingding66]

(...and until we looked at it, your cat was either both dead and alive or neither dead nor alive, Mr. Schroedinger.) ah this is where the real adventure begins. But the thought of Bill Gates and Feynman diagrams sends a chill of dread down my spine. --dingding66@attbi.com

My other computer is a pencil

[gelfling]

Remember the good old days when a good engineer could race a computer to a solution with a circular slide rule? I do. Then there were complete IC based computers and we couldn't do that anymore. Then around 1987 we all said 25 nano lithography was the theoretical limit of the physics. Which of course was wrong because it was based on materials science that was already old.

At any rate - I don't feel comfortable making prognostications about technology 10 years in the future. Any every time I think about I also think about Turing's paraodx. That says, that if you need 10 years to solve a problem today but in 3 years you will probably have the technology to solve it in only 5 years then you should wait 3 years to start and you will be 2 years ahead of the games already.