tag: Moore’s Law

Uncertainty Grows For 5nm, 3nm
By Mark LaPedus - 19 Dec, 2016 - Comments: 4

As several chipmakers ramp up their 10nm finFET processes, with 7nm just around the corner, R&D has begun for 5nm and beyond. In fact, some are already moving full speed ahead in the arena. [getentity id="22586" comment="TSMC"] recently announced plans to build a new fab in Taiwan at a cost of $15.7 billion. The proposed fab is targeted to manufacture TSMC’s 5nm and 3nm processes, whic... » read more

Morphing Moore’s Law
By Ed Sperling - 15 Dec, 2016 - Comments: 0

In 1965, Gordon Moore defined a timetable for doubling the number of transistors on a piece of silicon every two years. The law, as he originally defined it, is now hopelessly outdated. Any attempts to apply it to the most advanced chips today are a stretch at best, and complete fiction at worst. No one is on a two-year cadence between process nodes anymore—not even Intel. In fact, no one ... » read more

Tech Talk: FD-SOI vs. FinFET
By Ed Sperling - 15 Dec, 2016 - Comments: 0

Jamie Schaeffer, 22FDX program director at GlobalFoundries, talks about the future of FD-SOI, what the tradeoffs are in performance, power and cost compared with finFETs, how many mask layers and patterning steps are required for each, and when 12nm FD-SOI will be introduced. Related Stories To 7nm And Beyond GlobalFoundries’ top technologists open up on next-gen FD-SOI, the economi... » read more

What Comes After Moore’s Law And Dennard Scaling?
By Steven Woo - 08 Dec, 2016 - Comments: 0

For decades, Moore’s Law has been an important semiconductor industry mainstay that has helped fuel a relentless progression in computing performance. However, most industry experts agree that Moore’s Law is waning, with an end on the horizon due to a combination of physical limitations and economic factors. With the loss of Dennard Scaling roughly 10 years ago, the industry is at a critica... » read more

IoT, Architectures, And Security
By Ed Sperling - 01 Dec, 2016 - Comments: 1

Mike Muller, CTO of [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"], sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about security, IoT market changes, and future technology requirements. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Security is a growing problem. How do we deal with it? Muller: However fast the world is moving, if you look at fundamental hardware and system design, it’s ru... » read more

Multi-Patterning Issues At 7nm, 5nm
By Ed Sperling - 28 Nov, 2016 - Comments: 13

Continuing to rely on 193nm immersion lithography with multiple patterning is becoming much more difficult at 7nm and 5nm. With the help of various resolution enhancement techniques, optical lithography using a deep ultraviolet excimer laser has been the workhorse patterning technology in the fab since the early 1980s. It is so closely tied with the continuation of [getkc id="74" comment="Mo... » read more

New Wave Of Consolidation
By Ed Sperling - 22 Nov, 2016 - Comments: 0

Consolidation is picking up again across the semiconductor industry, against a backdrop of looming interest rate hikes, geopolitical uncertainty, and the erosion of longstanding demarcations between markets. In the past couple of weeks, Siemens signed a deal to buy [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"] for $4 billion, and [getentity id="22865" e_name="Samsung"] purchased Harman, a ... » read more

Advanced Packaging Requires Better Yield
By Ed Sperling - 17 Nov, 2016 - Comments: 1

Whether Moore's Laws truly ends, or whether the semiconductor industry reaches into the Angstrom world after 3nm—the semiconductor industry dislikes fractions—advanced packaging increasingly will dominate semiconductor designs. Apple already is on board with its iPhone 7, using TSMC's fan-out approach. And all of the major foundries and OSATs are lining up with a long list of capabilitie... » read more

Making 2.5D, Fan-Outs Cheaper
By Ed Sperling - 17 Nov, 2016 - Comments: 2

Now that it has been shown to work, the race is on to make advanced [getkc id="27" kc_name="packaging"] more affordable. While device scaling could continue for another decade or more, the number of companies that can afford to develop SoCs at the leading edge will continue to decline. The question now being addressed is what can supplant it, supplement it, or redefine it. At the center o... » read more

Politics And (Low) Power
By Ed Sperling - 10 Nov, 2016 - Comments: 4

This week the entire semiconductor market woke up with a severe political hangover. Aside from the initial shock of the election results themselves, the winning platform of "America First" could have far-reaching implications for an industry that has spent decades optimizing a global supply chain the way it has finely tuned other processes to reduce the cost per transistor. There are many un... » read more

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