Moore\u2019s Law has always been about economics: if we follow the trend of Moore\u2019s Law, we can reduce the cost per function for our integrated circuits, making chips more powerful for the same cost, or making chips of a given capability cheaper. Historically, cost per function has decreased by about 29% per year, corresponding to a factor of 2 decrease in cost every two years. There are signs that this historic cost reduction trend will slow down. How much of a slowdown can our industry tolerate? If the cost per function is expected to decrease by less than 10% per year going forward, it is unlikely that chipmakers will be willing to invest the massive amounts required for a new generation of fabs. I suspect that the minimum cost per function decrease we can live with is about 15% per year.<\/p>\n
What does this say about lithography costs and capabilities per technology node? The cost\/function of a chip is the ratio of the cost\/area of finished silicon from making the chip and the functions\/area that the technology node can deliver. Over the last decade we have been on a 2-year technology shrink schedule, so that the functions\/area double every two years. Thus, by keeping the cost\/area constant, we have been able to reduce cost\/function by 29% per year. If we stay on the same 2-year shrink cycle, a minimum allowed 15% cost\/function decrease per year would allow a maximum of 20% increase in the cost\/area of silicon each year. Alternately, if we keep the cost\/area of silicon constant, we could slow down the 2-year technology node shrink cycle to 4 years between technology nodes, and still get the required 15% reduction in cost\/function per year.<\/p>\n
Of course, everyone in the semiconductor industry would love to stay on our historic trends: constant cost\/area of finished silicon, and a two year cycle of doubling the functions\/area. It seems unlikely that this trend can be maintained during the current decade, however. Thus, using a minimum allowed cost\/function decrease of 15%\/year as a target, we can either allow chipmaking costs\/area to increase by 20% each year and stay on the 2-year technology node cycle, or we can allow our technology node cycle to slow to every four years while keeping manufacturing costs\/area constant. Either option will allow for continued success, and probably a bit of growth, for the semiconductor industry. But if the technology shrinks come too slowly, or costs rise too quickly, the days of Moore\u2019s Law will be numbered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Moore\u2019s Law has always been about economics: if we follow the trend of Moore\u2019s Law, we can reduce the cost per function for our integrated circuits, making chips more powerful for the same cost, or making chips of a given capability cheaper. Historically, cost per function has decreased by about 29% per year, corresponding to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microlithography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}