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Moore's Law Continues

Intel reports new material to shrink chips

From the Article:

"Intel researchers have discovered a new material that they say will permit them to overcome one of the most serious obstacles facing chipmakers as they struggle to shrink computer chips to ever-smaller dimensions.

The announcement, made at a technical conference in Japan on Wednesday, could be a crucial step forward because the industry has been increasingly plagued by the problem of preventing electrical current from leaking outside its proper path as each generation of chips has moved closer to fundamental physical limits....

Intel has had a small team working on the problem of a replacement for silicon in its Hillsborough, Oregon, research laboratories for five years in an effort to continue to advance chipmaking technology at the relentless pace of Moore's law. This law predicts that the number of transistors that can packed into the same space should double every 18 months."

As the transistors on chips have gotten smaller and smaller, manufacturers have been able to create chips containing tens of millions of transistors. At the same time, the problem with heat generation has grown. Intel's development will significantly reduce the heat that each transistor generates, allowing transistors to shrink further. Over the next several years, Intel will be able to move from 90 nanometer manufacturing processes down to 45 nanometer processes and fit up to four times as many transistors on the same chip. Within this decade we are likely to see individual chips containing half a billion transistors.

Developments like these explain why Moore's Law has been able to stay on course for decades. Each time we seem to bump up against fundamental limits, scientists and engineers develop new technologies to keep Moore's Law on track. See Robotic Nation for details.