first published week of: 07/25/2016
In the next five years, it will be too expensive to further miniaturize—but chip makers will innovate in different ways.
Moore’s Law has been slowing for a while. But the U.S. industry that exploits it has finally recognized that it is about to die.
The Semiconductor Industry Association—made up of the likes of Intel, AMD, and Global Foundries—has published the 2015 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. It suggests that, after decades of miniaturization, transistors look set to stop shrinking in size altogether by 2021. After that date, the report claims, it will not be economically efficient to reduce the size of silicon transistors any further. continued…