Moore's Law Staying Strong Through 30nm

jeffsenter writes "The NYTimes has the story on IBM with JSR Micro advancing photolithograhy research to allow 30nm chips. Good news for Intel, AMD, Moore's Law and overclockers. The IBM researchers' technology advance allows for the same deep ultraviolet rays used to make chips today to be used at 30nm. Intel's newest CPUs are manufactured at 65nm and present technology tapped out soon after that. This buys Moore's Law a few more years."

Comments

Glad to see IBM catching up...

[merced317]

since RIT has been doing 26nm. http://www.physorg.com/news10755.html

Re:I've heard that one before...

[Waffle Iron]

Isn't that why it's a law?

It's not a law. It's just incorrectly called a law.

It should be plainly obvious that any exponentially increasing phenomenon can't be a "law". If this so-called law were to continue unabated for a couple of centuries, the number of transistors in a chip would exceed the number of atoms on planet earth. Clearly, a limit is going to be reached well before that happens.

Re:Moore's Law is so 1998

[Scarblac]

Moore's law is about the number of transistors on a chip. It states nothing at all about speed.

Re:What's the minimum then?

[lbrandy]

Well, if the gate layer is the smallest thing in the transistor and it is 11 atoms wide and 1 atom is the smallest measure, then smallest transistor theortically possible is 65nm/11 = 6nm

You are confusing dimensions. When intel refers to 65nm processes, they are talking about length and width ability to carve out features. Oxide layers "thickness" operates in the third dimension ("height"?) to provide resitant layers. It is much smaller then 65nm. Actual atoms are about 200 picometers in "width".

Moore's law died years ago.

[Sheepdot]

I think it was in 2000 that a /. patron actually listed the "complexity"-related proof that Moore's law died in 2000, but here's my contribution:

Who said what?
California Institute of Technology Professor Carver Mead was the one who dubbed it Moore's Law, a lofty title Moore said he was too embarrassed to utter himself for about 20 years. David House, a former Intel executive, extrapolated that the doubling of transistors doubles performance every 18 months. Actually, performance doubles more like every 20 months. Moore emphatically says he never said 18 months for anything.

The rule also doesn't apply to hard-drive densities or to the growth of other devices. "Moore's Law has come to be applied to anything that changes exponentially, and I am happy to take credit for it," Moore joked.

From:
http://news.com.com/FAQ+Forty+years+of+Moores+Law+ -+page+2/2100-1006_3-5647824-2.html?tag=st.num

This is not about mhz ratings, though for a while these were doubling along the same rate as transistors per square inch were. Moore's comments were about integrated circuit "complexity" minimum component costs, which, if you are talking about transistors, has remained reasonable accurate. If you are talking about mhz per dollar, then you're going to find this is not accurate at all.

Long story short, if you had a 2 ghz machine in early 2003 and you're wondering why you aren't on an 8 ghz machine now, it's because mhz ratings have NOTHING to do with Moore's Law. Which is why I suggest referring to the Wiki entry on it.

Also important is Kryder's Law for HD storage capacity. Within a decade or two we may be able to store all creative works ever created on one drive.

Case in point: Hard drives increase a thousand-fold in storage space every 10.5 years. In 1996 I purchased a Compaq computer with a 1 gig drive. That was an insane amount of space at the time, but now, 10 years later, it looks like I may be able to purchase my first TB drive soon.

Re:on the BUSS

[RabidMoose]

To whoever modded the parent redundant. It was the first post. How is that possible?