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0 pointszozbot2344y ago0 comments

> Limiting physics. It is very hard to continue to make devices smaller at historical rates. Nobody is keeping up with the historical 2-year node cadence any longer. And the "nodes" now are marketing smoke and mirrors, anyway; they don't actually mean that device density has doubled.

There are plenty of process improvements to be made at the trailing edge of development, where the majority of manufactured chips actually are. The leading, most expensive device nodes which are most clearly bumping into physical constraints, will gradually be less and less representative of the industry as a whole.

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throwawaylinux4y ago· 3 in thread

Transistors actually keep getting smaller. 7nm->5nm devices got smaller. The transistors actually got significantly faster too. A lot of the problems are in wiring and powering the things, leakage, etc. so that's where more innovation is needed.

But the leading edge is far from standing still. I GAA and such pan out well that could be a very significant bump for the next few nodes. People act like everything stopped because "Moore's law is dead", but when you look at the rates of improvement in most other manufacturing sectors, semiconductors are still advancing at an enviable pace.

MayeulC4y ago

Dennard's scaling is long dead[1]. Density increases thanks to "3D" integration, but transistors do not shrink much. Thus more innovation needed in the areas you highlighted to make a "smaller" equivalent process node.

FinFET and GAA do achieve slightly better electrostatic control which results in lower leakage and slightly faster switching speeds, but gate length doesn't decrease much anymore, which puts a ceiling on switching speed improvements (thus frequency - GHz), and gate capacitance (linked to power consumption).

Increasing densities mean more avenues to explore specialized circuitry and dark silicon. Basically, more transistor to play with.

This is running very contrary to the previous paradigm with Moore's Law, in which specialized circuitry and specialized accelerators were not too deeply investigated as software implementations would gain so much performance that they would easily surpass them, while not needing to be redesigned for a newer node.

I'm now hoping for (and expecting) a revolution in maskless lithography at some point. That would democratize ASIC design (at 14nm, current multi-project wafers prototyping costs are around 10k€/mm², largely due to mask manufacturing), and make it much easier to explore the third dimension (thus making everyone more competitive with last gen).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling#Breakdown_of_D... (although that article is a bit terrible).

throwawaylinux4y ago

I know what Dennard scaling is, that's not what anybody is referring to when talking about process improvements.

The technology has improved since then. And it will continue to improve.

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nwiswell4y ago

> People act like everything stopped because "Moore's law is dead"

This is really not what I said anywhere. What I said is that the pace of advancement is slower now, and that process supremacy is no longer sufficient to guarantee performance supremacy.

That's a problem for Intel, since it was a core assumption of their business model.

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