IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 26

OnE chillY TuEsdaY EvEning lasT dEcEmbEr,

The End of
the Shrink
nobody will say that Moore's law
is over. but it's starting to get
really complicated
bY rachEl cOurTland

dozens of physicists and engineers who dream
up tomorrow's transistors met in San Francisco to ponder the far future. Would today's
state-of-the-art switch-a three-dimensional
transistor dubbed the FinFET-be able to
carry chips "to the finish," a distant, possibly unreachable horizon where transistors are
made up of just a handful of atoms? Or would
we need a new technology to get us there?
This may all sound like the tech world's
version of arguing over how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin, but it actually
has enormous real-world implications. The
semiconductor industry pulled in revenues
of US $300 billion in 2012. After decades
of fulfilling Gordon Moore's prophesy of
steadily doubling transistor densities (these
days every 18 to 24 months), the industry is
now delivering integrated circuits with transistors that are made using what chipmakers
call a 20- or 22-nanometer manufacturing
process. An IC fabricated with this process,
such as a microprocessor or a dynamic RAM
(DRAM) chip, can have billions of transistors.
Nevertheless, there on the cutting edge, the business is troubled.
Each new generation of ultradense chips demands a new manufacturing process of mind-boggling industrial and technological complexity. The struggle has become so pitched that researchers are now
often at a loss for words to describe the metrics of their progress.
At the December meeting, for example, Chenming Hu, the
coinventor of the FinFET, began by mapping out the near future.
Soon, he said, we'll start to see 14-nm and 16-nm chips emerge (the
first, from Intel, are slated to go into production later this year). Then
he added a caveat whose casual tone belied its startling implications:
"Nobody knows anymore what 16 nm means or what 14 nm means."

SemicondUctorS

26

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illustration by

Harry Campbell



http://SPectrUm.ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum November, 2013

IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 1
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 2
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 3
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 4
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 5
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 6
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 7
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 8
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 9
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 10
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 11
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 12
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 13
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 14
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 15
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 16
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 17
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 18
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 19
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 20
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 21
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 22
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 23
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 24
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 25
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 26
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 27
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 28
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 29
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 30
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 31
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 32
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 33
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 34
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 35
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 36
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 37
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 38
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 39
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 40
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 41
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 42
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 43
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 44
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 45
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 46
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 47
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 48
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 49
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 50
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 51
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 52
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 53
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 54
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 55
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 56
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 57
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 58
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 59
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 60
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 61
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 62
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 63
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 64
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 65
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 66
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 67
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 68
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 69
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 70
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 71
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 72
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 73
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 74
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 75
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 76
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 77
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 78
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 79
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 80
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 81
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 82
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 83
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 84
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - Cover4
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