New life for Moore's Law
Princeton professor Stephen Chou believes he has come up with a way to keep the semiconductor industry rolling forward, and it resembles something Henry VIII might have worn on his royal vestments.
Chou, who also founded Nanonex, is one of the prime advocates of "imprint lithography," a process that involves pressing an ornate template into a liquefied substrate to create a circuit pattern, similar to how a signet ring worked. In experiments, he has managed to create features measuring 6 nanometers, one-fifteenth the size on today's chips.
"Ten years ago, people said, 'This is crazy. You will never use technology to make things this small,'" Chou said.
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore's early observation about the rate of progress in the electronics industry--specifically, that the number of transistors on a microchip double every one to two years--turns 40 on Tuesday. Under this principle, chipmakers have managed to steadily boost the performance of their products while simultaneously dropping the price, a rare confluence that has allowed digital technology to seep into virtually every segment of the world economy.
Predictions about the death of Moore's Law have been wrong several times, too. In 1978, IBM scientists predicted Moore's Law had only 10 years left. When they got to 1988, they said it would end in 10 years again. Moore himself thought it would end at 250-nanometer manufacturing, a landmark the industry passed in 1997. (Via CNET)
Chou, who also founded Nanonex, is one of the prime advocates of "imprint lithography," a process that involves pressing an ornate template into a liquefied substrate to create a circuit pattern, similar to how a signet ring worked. In experiments, he has managed to create features measuring 6 nanometers, one-fifteenth the size on today's chips.
"Ten years ago, people said, 'This is crazy. You will never use technology to make things this small,'" Chou said.
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore's early observation about the rate of progress in the electronics industry--specifically, that the number of transistors on a microchip double every one to two years--turns 40 on Tuesday. Under this principle, chipmakers have managed to steadily boost the performance of their products while simultaneously dropping the price, a rare confluence that has allowed digital technology to seep into virtually every segment of the world economy.
Predictions about the death of Moore's Law have been wrong several times, too. In 1978, IBM scientists predicted Moore's Law had only 10 years left. When they got to 1988, they said it would end in 10 years again. Moore himself thought it would end at 250-nanometer manufacturing, a landmark the industry passed in 1997. (Via CNET)
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