Moores Law and Its Future

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Moores Law and Its Future

• Mark Clements

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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 RD
  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.htmext
  end
• http//www.intel.com/netcomms/technologies/manuf.h
  tm?iidtechtrendstech_manuf_expertise
• http//www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.ht
  m
• http//www.intel.com/labs/features/mi03031.htm