Moores Law and Its Future

Mark Clements

This Week Moores Law

History of Transistors and circuits The Integrated circuit manufacturing process Moore Law is announced Benefits of ICs Extrapolating Moores Law to its conclusion Technological advances Moores Law version 2?
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Discrete Transistors and Circuits

The transistor succeeded the valve in the late 1940s Electronic engineers began to design complex circuits using discrete components transistors, resistors, capacitors Performance and other problems were noticed due to the number of separate components

Circuits were unreliable and heavy

High power consumption long time to assemble Expensive to produce

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The Solution Integrated Circuits

Build entire circuit on a wafer of silicon
Use masking and spraying techniques in manufacture Pure silicon wafers made from large crystals of silicon

Areas of silicon doped with suitable elements e.g. Be

Conductive tracks made from aluminium Use this technique to produce other components e.g. capacitors and resistors on the same wafer

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Problems solved
Inter-device distances reduced faster circuits Lightweight circuits suitable for space travel Cheaper assembly cost after recovery of R&D costs Identical circuit properties better matching

Less power required less heat dissipated

Smaller circuits smaller devices could be built

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Gordon Moore - Observations

Gordon Moore worked for Fairchild Semiconductors He noticed a trend in IC manufacture Every 2 years the number of components on an area of silicon doubled* He published this work in 1965 known as Moores Law His predictions were for 10 years into the future His work predicted personal computers and fast telecommunication networks
* Sources vary regarding time period

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Graph of Moores Law

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IC Technologies
Small Scale Integration (SSI) combined around 10 discrete components onto 5mm square of silicon substrate.

SSI led to Medium Scale Integration (MSI), then Large Scale Integration (LSI) with many thousands of components in the same area of silicon.
Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) provided the means to implement around 1 million components per chip. Current technology produces silicon wafers with around 50 million components per chip. The Pentium 4 has around 55 million components on the wafer (2003).
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IC Technology

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Why does the law exist?

Some of the factors that contribute to Moores Law: Manufacturers wishing to keep up with the law

Competition between manufacturers

Successive technologies providing better design tools Customer demand for better products

Mans constant struggle to advance knowledge

There may be other factors too

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The Next Step

Intel have announced that they have the technology to produce microprocessors containing more than 400 million transistors, running at 10 gigahertz and operating at less than one volt, in the next five to ten years.

This is in line with Moores law

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Shrinking the Size of a Component

How small can a component become? What limits the size of a device?

What do we make the devices from?

Do quantum effects have an influence here? If there is a limit, what happens to Moores Law?

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The Current Limitations

Circuits cannot be reduced beyond atomic size Quantum effects reduce the reliability as size decreases

Lithographic techniques become more complex as the

size of components becomes smaller than the wavelength of light

Speed of electrical signals is finite

This suggests that Moores Law will finally end

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Lateral Thinking
To improve the performance of devices, new technologies are in development: Quantum storage (quantum data registers - a faster, more efficient way to store and retrieve data than the binary system we use today) Light operated transistors Electro-optical polymers and more are showing new techniques for achieving the ever higher performance demanded by industry and consumers

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The Future of ICs

Moore acknowledged that his "law" won't hold forever. He asserted that the right technological approaches can delay "forever", extending the longevity of his original prediction. Intel are working on new ideas such as SiGe and strained silicon to delay the end of Moores Law Designing transistors that switch at speeds around THz (can switch on and off a trillion times per second) The advances continue!

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The End of the Line?

It is obvious that technology will improve We may meet the lower size limit of a transistor Therefore the abilities of the transistor itself will have to improve instead

Faster switching, lower power designs etc.

ICs still improve
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Moores Law version 2?

After his law is no longer valid what can we use to measure trends? Component density? No it would be fairly constant Performance? Yes but which metric? Switching rate? Individual or bulk? Rise time? Access time or read/ write time Other measurable attributes

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Moore version 2s metric(s)

Technological advances will continue as long as there is demand for digital devices

It is immaterial whether the component density limit is reached

Another metric will have to be chosen to allow the IC evolution to be mapped and to allow valid predictions to be made Which metric this is extremely complex to choose

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Conclusion
Moores law will eventually reach its inevitable conclusion Technology will continue to advance

ICs with improved properties will be manufactured

Another metric will need to be chosen to allow the future trends to be mapped and predicted

The complexity of current IC design means this choice will be difficult

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References
http://www.intel.com/labs/features/mi03031.htm#extend http://www.intel.com/netcomms/technologies/manuf.htm?iid=techtr ends+tech_manuf_expertise& http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.htm http://www.intel.com/labs/features/mi03031.htm

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