by Bill Schweber for EETimes
Since its pronouncement in 1965, Moore’s Law has been the defining paradigm of the electronics industry. (”Law” is a misnomer, it’s a “conjecture”; F=ma is true law). Under its guidance, we relentlessly drive towards ever smaller features, higher densities, larger wafers and more chips per wafer. Yet there’s a problem with living under this law and its corresponding roadmap.
True, the implications of Moore’s Law have enabled the spectacular growth of the industry, but it has come at an enormous cost, literally and figuratively. Before you start flinging silicon wafers at me, let’s step back and take a different perspective.
The R&D needed to advance process technology to the next node is extraordinarily costly, and matched by the billion dollar fabs needed to take it to full production. In turn, vendors need extremely high volumes to pay for all this, while the market opportunities at these very high volumes are fading. How many products exists that will need the tens or even hundreds of millions of a given IC?
