Moore's Law: Still Going Strong After 40 Years

Moore’s Law and the race to the bottom By G. Dan Hutcheson

• “The definition of “Moore’s Law” has come to refer to almost anything related to the semiconductor industry that when plotted on semi-log paper approximates a straight line.” – Gordon Moore

• Moore’s Law postulates that the level of chip complexity doubles in a period of time.

• That cost of manufacturing a transistor decreases at a rate that is nearly inversely proportional to the increase in the number of components.

• Because, the cost of making any given integrated circuit at optimal transistor density levels is essentially constant in time.

• So the cost per component, or transistor, is cut roughly in half for each tick of Moore’s clock.

10000000 Early IC'S 1000000 MPU's 100000 DRAM's 10000 1000 100 10 1 Components (K) 0.1 0.01 0.001 1959 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2003 Year

So far, nothing seems to get in the way – despite recurring dire predictions that started as early as 1968.

Copyright © 2006 VLSI Research Inc All Rights Reserved 3 The Early History • 1887– Karl Marx notes that for every question science answers, it creates two new ones; and the answers are generated at minimal cost in proportion to the productivity gains made. • 1926 – Julius Lilienfeld conceptualizes solid- state amplifier. • Patent issued 1930. • 1934 – Oskar Heil patents FET. • 1947 – John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invent the point-contact transistor.

1.00E+19 1.00E+18 Transistor Production 1.00E+17 World Motor Vehicle Production 1.00E+16 1.00E+15 1.00E+14 1.00E+13

Unitss 1.00E+12 1.00E+11 1.00E+10 1.00E+09 1.00E+08 1.00E+07 1.00E+06 1955 1958 1961 1964 1967 1970 1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003

It’s an amazing picture of Man’s ability to triumph over nature: We have crossed 12 orders-of-magnitude milestones in 50 years.

Copyright © 2006 VLSI Research Inc All Rights Reserved 5 The IC unfolds • 1957 – “Traitorous Eight” leaving Shockley Transistor in 1957 to start Fairchild Semiconductor. • 1958 – Jean Hoerni invents the planar process – Only viewed as an important improvement in manufacturing. • 1958 – Jack Kilby wire bonds components together to make first IC. • Done over Christmas Holiday and formally unveiled in March 1959 • 1959 – Robert Noyce has idea of using planar process to make IC. Modern IC invented. • Entered in engineering notebook, January 1959

Copyright © 2006 VLSI Research Inc All Rights Reserved 6 The painful path to market • 1960 – Moore tells senior marketing person, “Do not oversell the future of integrated circuits. ICs will never be as cheap as the same function implemented using discrete components.” • 1963 – First commercial IC shipped by Fairchild. • 1965 – Gordon Moore’s Paper published in Electronics on page 114.

• 1968 – Intel founded with ML strategy. • 1975 – Moore’s 2nd paper: – Node clock slowed from 12 to 24 months. – Tax law plays a factor. 12 months too fast to depreciate. • Intel’s success came in large part due to a better understanding of Moore’s Law. – They paced to system introductions.

1000000000 Moore's 100000000 "No Exponential is Forever" paper Integrated (VMIC '93) 10000000 Moore's Circuit "But, Forever can be Invented Delayed" 1000000 (1958) paper (ISSCC '03) 100000 Fir s t Commercial 10000 IC's sold (1963) Moore's 1000 second Moore's first paper paper (IEDM '75) 100 (Electronics '65)

10 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

If the semiconductor were fully adjusted for inflation, its size in 2004 would have been 6 million-trillion dollars . . . or 10’s of K x GWP.

• He comprehended the future improvements in manufacturing that would drive linewidths ever smaller.

• He provided the business model for how this would drive costs.

• He distilled it into a vision that the industry grabbed hold of – making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Five Decades of Critical Dimension Shrinks (in nanometers)

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1.E+01 1957 1959 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 Year

Year CD (nm) Lithography Technology 1957 254,000 Camel’s Hair Brush 1958 127,000 Silk Screen Printer 1959 76,200 Contact Printer – Emulsion plates 1964 16,000 Contact Printer – Chrome plates 1972 8000 Proximity Aligner 1974 5000 Projection Aligner 1982 2000 g-line Stepper 1990 800 i-line Stepper 1997 250 248nm Scanner 2003 90 193nm Scanner • We’ve gone from 10 cents to 25 Million Dollars and Moore’s Law is still alive.

• Bigger more powerful trains. – Union Pacific DDA40X • Bigger Jets. – Boeing 747 • Faster Jets. – Concorde supersonic transport. • Faster Cars. – Freeways designed for safe speeds above 100 MPH. – Ferrari Enzo capable of more than 200 MPH.

Copyright © 2006 VLSI Research Inc All Rights Reserved 14 Will something similar happen to chips? • Customers don’t need more integration? • Can’t shrink anymore? • CMOS doesn’t work anymore? • Fabs too expensive?

• But we have proven amazingly able to beat the experts – It is the engineering feat of modern times.

Copyright © 2006 VLSI Research Inc All Rights Reserved 15 Customer’s don’t need more integration • There is no abatement in the demand for transistors. • There is an innate human need to store and process information. – 30000 BC: Chauvet cave drawings – 9000 BC: Sumerian clay tokens – 3000 BC: Tokens replaced with tablets – 2000 BC: Egyptians develop Papyrus paper – 105 AD: Ts’ai Lun invents wood based paper – 1436 AD: Johann Gutenberg invents printing press – 1456 AD: Gutenberg bible published – 1876 AD: Melville Dewey publishes classification system – 1936 AD: Alan Turing decribes the “Turing Machine”

10000000 Electronics Chips 1000000 Chip Equipment

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Chips and Equipment have been tracking 1000 Electronics growth rates since 1995, albeit with higher volatility. 100 (Revenues in $M)

10 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004P

RESTRICTED DATA: for access and use only w ithin your company, as per your company's agreement w ith VLSI Research Inc. Copyright © 2003 by VLSI Research Inc. But industry growth has slowed. First in 1985 and again 1995. For more: see my ISSM 2003 Keynote at chiphistory.org

Copyright © 2006 VLSI Research Inc All Rights Reserved 17 Moore’s Wall: We can’t shrink anymore • Even Gordon had faith in optical “It is worth noting that this density of components can be achieved by present optical techniques and does not require the more exotic electron beam operations which are being studied for the possibility of making even smaller structures . . . for “Transistors on 2 mil centers.” – Gordon Moore, Electronics, 1965 • Despite repeated predictions of its demise, optical lithography is still here.

Copyright © 2006 VLSI Research Inc All Rights Reserved 18 What does Gordon have to say about when Moore’s wall will appear? “Who knows? I used to argue that we would never get the gate oxide thickness below 1000 angstroms and then later 100. Now we’re below 10 and we’ve demonstrated 30nm gate lengths. We can build them in the 1000’s. But the real difficulty will be in figuring out how to uniformly build tens of millions of these transistors and wire them together in one chip.” – Gordon Moore in The Chip Insider, May 25, 2001 No one can predict it, but we have always found a way around it.

• CMOS wasn’t the beginning – Point Contact, Mesa, NPN, PNP, DMOS, PMOS, NMOS preceded it. • CMOS won’t be the end – Spintronics, carbon nanotubes, nanowire

• There’s still plenty of room left at the bottom.

• But, lithography may have to get replaced with self-assembly.

• It is generally accepted that cost-per- function needs to decline by 30% per node.

• That allows the manufacturing cost per unit area of silicon to rise by 40% per node. – It’s simple math.

Moore's 2nd Law: Fact of Fiction? 10000 First published back in the '80's by VLSI, this chart w as used then to show the tendency of fab costs to double every tw o nodes. The trend w as first named "Hutcheson's Law " in 1989 by Hartw ig Ruell of Siemens; then "Rock's Law " in 1994 by Ken Thompson of Intel; and finally "Moore's 2nd Law " by 1000 Business Week in 1996. In the early nineties, VLSI predicted that this trend w ould plateau, w hich happened. Ironically, Moore's Second Law gained mythological status just as it w as dieing. More recently it has risen w ith the introduction of 300mm. 100

10 Average Fab Cost in Fab Average $M

1 1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003F 2005F

Fab costs came down with the dotcom crash. The shift to 40K WSM fabs doubled costs. Otherwise, 300mm costs little more than 200mm.

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1000 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Depreciation per transistor is what drives Moore’s Law: It continues to go down, proving that fabs are not too expensive.

FORD MOTOR COMPANY'S EQUIVALENT TO MOORE'S LAW (the early years of the auto industry) 900

800 Average Price 700 Average Cost Average Profit 600

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• Saturation is slowing the industry’s growth.

• Fab costs are not a threat.

• Even if Moore’s Wall does appear . . . THE SHOW MUST AND WILL GO ON! or . . . a sunset doesn’t mean there won’t be a new day.