Is Moore’s Law Still Alive?

What is Moore’s law

 

The prediction made by Gordon Moore in 1965 was that the number of transistors per silicon chip would double every year. Over time, this rate of growth slowed, and Moore revised his time frame to two years, which turned out to be a bit pessimistic.

 

Transistor features measuring less than a micron were achieved in the 1980s, which allowed for the manufacture of DRAM chips with megabyte storage capacities. By the early 21st century, transistor features had shrunk to 0.1 micron, which enabled the creation of gigabyte memory chips and microprocessors that operate at gigahertz frequencies.

 

Even in the second decade of the 21st century, Moore's Law continued with the introduction of three-dimensional transistors that were only tens of nanometers in size. The continued exponential growth of the semiconductor industry has been truly remarkable and is a testament to the power of Moore's Law and the ingenuity of the engineers and scientists who have made it a reality.

 

Over time, the details of Moore's Law have been amended to better reflect the actual growth of transistor density. The doubling interval was increased to two years at one point and then decreased to about 18 months. However, the exponential nature of Moore's Law has continued, creating significant opportunities for the semiconductor industry over several decades.

 

The continued scalability of transistors according to Moore's Law has enabled the development of increasingly powerful and energy-efficient electronic devices, from smartphones to supercomputers. However, there are concerns that the law may be reaching its limits, as the physical constraints of semiconductor manufacturing make it increasingly difficult to further shrink transistors. Nonetheless, researchers and engineers continue to explore new materials, device architectures, and manufacturing techniques, in order to push the limits of what is possible in semiconductor technology.

 

Benefits of Moore’s law

 

As semiconductor process technology has increased in complexity, the innovation engine behind Moore's Law has been fueled. However, these increases in complexity have been accelerating over recent years, and transistors are now three-dimensional devices that exhibit counter-intuitive behavior.

 

The extremely small feature size of advanced process technologies required multiple exposures, or multi-patterning, to accurately reproduce these features on a silicon wafer, which has added complexity to the design process. This has in turn slowed down the pace of Moore's Law, as moving to a new process node is now more challenging and costly than before.

 

Furthermore, each new process node is now delivering less dramatic results in terms of density, performance, and power reduction. The evolution of semiconductor process technology is reaching its molecular limits, which is slowing the exponential benefits of Moore's Law. While the benefits of Moore's Law have been remarkable, we are reaching the point where the next major breakthrough in semiconductor technology may require something entirely new and innovative.

 

Futures of Moore’s law

There are different opinions on the future of Moore's Law, and some argue that it is no longer applicable in the strictest sense due to the fundamental barriers presented by the size of atoms and the growing costs of cooling and manufacturing transistors.

 

However, others argue that the trend of increasing computational power is still present through advances in supercomputers, cloud computing, and new ways of writing software. For example, the rise of GPUs has led to new developments in machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence accelerators that perform AI tasks more efficiently.

 

While there are many new techniques and possibilities being researched, it's difficult to predict which ones will redefine computing in the future. Some of these research areas include spintronics, non-silicon-based electronics, and quantum computing, although they are still many years away from having a significant impact.

 

In the end, it's important to note that Moore's Law may no longer be the driving force behind computing innovation, and that a combination of different approaches will likely be needed to continue advancing computational power.