Intel Researchers See Moore's Law Becoming Obsolete

prostoalex writes "A paper, published by Intel researchers, claims we might be the witnesses of Moore's Law becoming obsolete, as the rate of shrinkage for transistors goes lower with each year. In 2018 we might be able to get the chips manufactured with 16-nanometer technology, then one or two more manufacturing processes will shrink it even further, but after that we're facing the physical limits."

Comments

Moore's law is NOT obsolete

[__aavhli5779]

I think several upstarts are soon going to be ready to extend Moore's law for at least another few decades, thanks to diamond semiconductors.

Silicon is, indeed, close to its limit, but that does not mean semiconductors are.

This Wired article, which I'm sure many of you have read, details how new industrially-produced diamonds, thanks to their cheap price and purity (most importantly, being absolutely identical to each other), along with research done by both the government, several corporations, and possibly Intel, may make unbelievably fast systems powered by diamond semiconductors possible.

Some interesting quotes:

But the greatest potential for CVD diamond lies in computing. If diamond is ever to be a practical material for semiconducting, it will need to be affordably grown in large wafers. (The silicon wafers Intel uses, for example, are 1 foot in diameter.) CVD growth is limited only by the size of the seed placed in the Apollo machine. Starting with a square, waferlike fragment, the Linares process will grow the diamond into a prismatic shape, with the top slightly wider than the base. For the past seven years - since Robert Linares first discovered the sweet spot - Apollo has been growing increasingly larger seeds by chopping off the top layer of growth and using that as the starting point for the next batch. At the moment, the company is producing 10-millimeter wafers but predicts it will reach an inch square by year's end and 4 inches in five years. The price per carat: about $5.

Also, a rather ironic one from Intel themselves:

Indeed, Intel's top materials executives weren't aware of the latest research breakthroughs when I spoke to them in June, although they certainly understood the potential for diamonds in computing. "Diamonds represent a seismic change in semiconductors," says Krishnamurthy Soumyanath, Intel's director of communications circuits research. "It takes us about 10 years to evaluate a new material. We have a lot of investment in silicon. We're not about to abandon that."

Silicon is dead. Long live diamonds!

Re:Moore's law is NOT obsolete

[IvyMike]

There's nothing fundamental about diamond that will change electron tunnelling. The Intel paper was not silicon specific--to quote the article itself:

The tunneling effects, Gargini said, will occur regardless of the chemistry of the transistor materials. Several researchers over the years have predicted the end of Moore's Law but made the mistake of extrapolating on the basis of existing materials.

The concept behind the Intel researchers' paper was, "why don't we do something based entirely on fundamental principles?" Gargini said. "The beauty of our paper is that it is independent of materials."

Re:Again?

[gregorio]

You are aware that Moore's Law is about the doubling of density of transistors and not "computing power" or some such undefinable quantity? Moore's law will be broken simply because physical entities cannot follow an exponential growth for very long. Computing power will still increase.

Nope, Moore's law is about transistor count.

From Intel's website: "Moore observed an exponential growth in the number of transistors per integrated circuit and predicted that this trend would continue. "

Re:Again?

[Hoser McMoose]

To be a tiny bit pedantic, Moore's original paper talked about the number of transistors per integrated circuit at any given price point. You can always stick more transistors on the chip if you're willing to throw sufficient amounts of money at the problem, but to get those transistors for a reasonable price is another matter.

FWIW, Moore's original hypothesis was that the transistors/$ would double every 12 months, so his "law" hasn't been correct for quite some time. We had been seeing a doubling of transistors about every 18 months for a while, but now it's more like every 24 months. With the current troubles that Intel, AMD and IBM all seem to be having at implementing their new 90nm manufacturing process, it seems likely that the pace will continue to slow.