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Intel Finds Moore's Law's Next Step At 10 Nanometers (ieee.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Sometime in 2017, Intel will ship the first processors built using the company's new, 10-nanometer chip-manufacturing technology. Intel says transistors produced in this way will be cheaper than those that came before, continuing the decades-long trend at the heart of Moore's Law -- and contradicting widespread talk that transistor-production costs have already sunk as low as they will go.
In the coming years, Intel plans to make further improvements to the design of these transistors. And, for the first time, the company will optimize its manufacturing technology to accommodate other companies that wish to use Intel's facilities to produce chips based on ARM architecture, which is nearly ubiquitous in modern mobile processors.
In the coming years, Intel plans to make further improvements to the design of these transistors. And, for the first time, the company will optimize its manufacturing technology to accommodate other companies that wish to use Intel's facilities to produce chips based on ARM architecture, which is nearly ubiquitous in modern mobile processors.
At least part of the problem is that the reason those markets are lucrative is because of patents.
If I spend X billion dollars developing Y, I need to be able to (at least) make X billion dollars back.
You, on the other hand, with Y in hand because of weak patents, and no need to have spent X billion dollars to get there, will be selling Y under the price that I can afford to, because you didn't spend X on developing it. So I go out of business. Which means next time you need methodologies, you won't be getting them from me. Because you killed me by entering the market without paying the same costs I did.
These problems are very serious when you're talking about very expensive development and/or manufacturing. They affect drug companies, chip manufacturers, vehicle manufacturers, etc. Some types of development and/or manufacturing require big costs to bootstrap, and no, bottom line, it's not reasonable to allow the next-in-line operation to bypass those costs at the early entry entity's expense.
Patents have a limited term, either 14 or 20 years, depending on the type; this sets fairly discrete bounds on what you can, and can't, do. Unlike copyrights, patent law hasn't (yet) fallen off the edge of the earth into the blatantly unreasonable.
In the US, this all stems from article I, section 8, clause 8, of the constitution (emphasis mine):
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Moore's law has been decelerating for a long time but is far from dead. What's really surprising is how far visible light lithography has been pushed, when everybody thought EUV would be needed long ago. Now, feature size is _way_ less than the wavelength, nice trick that. Even less than EUV wavelength. Probably, EUV will be used for 5nm nodes. Nanoimprint might take over when EUV reaches its limits. This is while staying with silicon. A 1 nm transistor (gate size) has already been demonstrated, and it won't stop there.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
That's what a scientific law is: a relation between measured observations. It can be purely empirical.
There's a law for centrifugal force, and it isn't even a real force!
It should be more clearly stated, Like Cole's Law.
Cole's Law: When making cole slaw for a large group, there will be 50% left over even when you account for Cole's Law.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
People don't realize this. Even without patents, no one else is close to 10 nm yet.
You mean besides the three companies that have already (Samsung) or will shortly (TSMC, Toshiba) beat Intel to 10nm?
... not understanding that Intel invented lying about node size.. and hasnt even produced a true 22nm yet.
Intel fumbled the ball on this node. Their process advantage is gone, and combined with their vertical integration disadvantage, will see them fall farther and farther behind. Thats why they have recently done massive layoffs and are now blanketing press releases about a new "cloud strategy."
Intel knows that they are now in a bad position. Their competitors also know it. Contrary to popular shalshdot belief, the list of Intels main competitors do not include AMD or even ARM. Intel is a fabrication company. Its main competitors are TSMC, Samsung, Toshiba, and Global Foundries, and there are dozens of smaller competitors, and all of them are now eating into Intel at all node sizes. Samsung arrived at 10nm mass production first, and TSMC is following closely behind.
of course some anonymous coward will now say that Samsung isnt producing true 10nm
Rate these things on transistor density and you will see that Intel is behind Samsung now, and will soon also be behind TSMC and Toshiba.
"His name was James Damore."