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EUV pushbacks from Applied Materials and ASML have pushed 10nm back quite a bit. I honestly don't see Moore's law progressing beyond 3nm, maybe even stopping a

EUV pushbacks from Applied Materials and ASML have pushed 10nm back quite a bit. I honestly don't see Moore's law progressing beyond 3nm, maybe even stopping at 7nm or 10nm.

luhn 10y ago
Well, Moore's law is already dead. Intel missed the mark last year. As far as shrinking transistors further, isn't 7nm the physical limit? Edit: I'm mistaken. Transistors as small as 1nm have been developed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nanometer#Technology_demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nanometer#Technology_demos
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  When transistors stop shrinking- whether that's at 10, 5 or 7nm- the limit is going to be economic, not physical. Intel probably could make a chip with 1nm transistors; the question is whether it would ever deliver a positive ROI, since - the R&D and the fabs would probably cost a zillion dollars, in a shrinking market for high-performance CPUs - yields would probably be very low, even as the process matured - this problem is becoming more and more pronounced with the latest generations - the advantages over the current chips would not be great; note svantana's comment about diminishing returns with the most recent process shrink
  - curiousgal 10y ago
    >a shrinking market for high-performance CPUs It is??
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      Well, for chips that are, say, twice as fast as the best current chips for three times the money, I suspect that the market is in fact shrinking, because for most people, current chips are good enough. There's still plenty of people who want more speed badly enough to pay for it, but my impression is that there aren't as many as there used to be.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        Agreed, there's still plenty of people hitting pain with Image/Video processing, 3D development (design or programming), 4K video/gaming/modelling are definitely still out there... Upgraded to an i7-4790K almost 2 years ago, and while not willing to drop another $1500 to upgrade to the latest CPU/MB, I have been keeping an eye open.
      - ethbro 10y ago
        Or in other words, the market for single-chip performance is shrinking. The hyperscale folks care about how much physical space given performance takes, but that's likely more energy/performance than chipcount/performance constrained.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      That was my thought too... Facebook, Google/GCE, Amazon/AWS, Azure, U.S. and Chinese governments probably account for most CPU purchases from Intel.
      - deepnotderp 10y ago
        The "super 7" as they're called, account for ~60% of Intel's data center revenue, which accounts for ~60% of their profit. 7 companies provide Intel with 36% of its profit...
        anoonmoose 10y ago
        I mean, that's bog-standard 80-20 rule stuff, innit?
        kdeldycke 10y ago
        The "Super 7" are: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Source: http://fortune.com/2015/11/15/intel-super-7/ http://fortune.com/2015/11/15/intel-super-7/
- dogma1138 10y ago
  It's important to note that none of the processes actually describe a physical size anymore. They used too now it's just PR, a 10nm 14nm or 7nm processes don't actually have anything that is the process "size" in size. Together with various optimization the process name is "analogous" to a hypothetical CMOS lithography with of that scale.
- deepnotderp 10y ago
  There's a BIG difference between transistors being developed and having sustainable manufacturing processes and good yields. Intel actually taped out an internal chip on 10nm, but then "mysteriously" scrapped it. Likely because of bad yields... And that's not even dealing with the demon of quantum tunneling which IMO will likely kill node shrinks even harder. Finally, the other comment is right, Dennard scaling is dead, and thermals have become the primary constraint in chip design. FinFETs have somewhat helped with this, but it's not enough.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  Only for some interpretations of Moore's law. The strictest readings count transistors in CPUs. But plenty take it as a general prediction in the doubling of performance of hardware. Computing things still get cheaper as more tech gets included. For example, Someone working in AI or video games can drop a $1000 on a Cuda enabled GPU and get more than a 10x more performance increase then they could reasonably get with that $1000 3 years earlier. This is much more than the two doublings some interpretations of Moore's law predicts. Not all performance increases are going to be inside the most complex part.
cocoa19 10y ago
Why don't you see Moore's law progressing beyond 3nm and maybe even stopping at 7nm or 10nm?
- PeCaN 10y ago
  Physics comes to mind, also that Moore's law stopped in the strict sense (doubling every 18 months) years ago.
- ansible 10y ago
  Why don't you see Moore's law progressing beyond 3nm and maybe even stopping at 7nm or 10nm? At that size, defects of just a couple silicon atoms (approximately 0.2nm diameter) starts to become an issue. Photo lithography requires higher frequencies of "light" for smaller features, which also becomes more of a pain to deal with. And that doesn't even get into the quantum effects at that scale, which is whole 'nother barrel of headaches. I'm still surprised at the (seemingly to me) lack of research in molecular nanotechnology. We're rapidly approaching the point where we do need to precisely control the placement of each individual atom for these products. You'd think the boards of directors and major investors would be pushing these companies harder to develop the next generation technologies. Though Wall Street itself barely cares about the next three months.
- deepnotderp 10y ago
  Yields, quantum effects and lithography problems.
svantana 10y ago
Isn't the real problem that process shrinks have stopped giving performance gains? Broadwell halved the logic area of Haswell (see slide in article), but benchmarks showed improvements of only a few percent. Surely that stagnation can only get worse at 10 nm. If Intel actually saw a huge business case for 10 nm, my guess is they would have found a way by now.
- trhway 10y ago
  >Broadwell halved the logic area of Haswell (see slide in article), but benchmarks showed improvements of only a few percent. in the presence of competition the Broadwell chip would have double the number of cores of the Haswell chip it was replacing, and thus the modern multithreaded benchmarks would have shown double the performance. Current situation clearly showcases what happens when there is no competition (the experience very familiar to anybody who saw/rode/drove a USSR/Russian made car or aware of the Russian presidential elections history of the last 17 years :)
  - kristianp 10y ago
    If you double the cores, you also double the TDP. They can only do that where the application permits, such as servers.
    - tormeh 10y ago
      Or desktops. Or heavy laptops. Current i7s seem designed for the MacBook Pro. That should have been the i5 or i3 segment.
      - wmf 10y ago
        You want a laptop processor hotter than 50W?
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        It has a fan. There's no need for more watts to make it hotter.
jackals 10y ago
For more than a decade, the Semicon industry has been trying to extend Moore's Law with CO2 laser technology that essentially has not had a generational advance since Moore's article was published. The laser wasn't the only issue, but now that those other barriers are being overcome, it will be the prime one. Far from acceptable cost-of-ownership, and inability to scale, have been known laser limiting factors from the beginning. That makes the hesitancy of companies, such as Intel, ASML/Cymer and Trumpf, to invest in CO2 laser breakthroughs that have been presented to them, more than shocking. The minimum commercial viability of 250W EUV@IF (Intermediate Focus) has still not been achieved. There is no chance of them scaling to the 1kW EUV@IF that Intel has stated is needed for truly sustainable viability.

EUV pushbacks from Applied Materials and ASML have pushed 10nm back quite a bit. I honestly don't see Moore's law progressing beyond 3nm, maybe even stopping at 7nm or 10nm.

luhn 10y ago

Well, Moore's law is already dead. Intel missed the mark last year. As far as shrinking transistors further, isn't 7nm the physical limit? Edit: I'm mistaken. Transistors as small as 1nm have been developed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nanometer#Technology_demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nanometer#Technology_demos

Analemma_ 10y ago
When transistors stop shrinking- whether that's at 10, 5 or 7nm- the limit is going to be economic, not physical. Intel probably could make a chip with 1nm transistors; the question is whether it would ever deliver a positive ROI, since - the R&D and the fabs would probably cost a zillion dollars, in a shrinking market for high-performance CPUs - yields would probably be very low, even as the process matured - this problem is becoming more and more pronounced with the latest generations - the advantages over the current chips would not be great; note svantana's comment about diminishing returns with the most recent process shrink
- curiousgal 10y ago
  >a shrinking market for high-performance CPUs It is??
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Well, for chips that are, say, twice as fast as the best current chips for three times the money, I suspect that the market is in fact shrinking, because for most people, current chips are good enough. There's still plenty of people who want more speed badly enough to pay for it, but my impression is that there aren't as many as there used to be.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Agreed, there's still plenty of people hitting pain with Image/Video processing, 3D development (design or programming), 4K video/gaming/modelling are definitely still out there... Upgraded to an i7-4790K almost 2 years ago, and while not willing to drop another $1500 to upgrade to the latest CPU/MB, I have been keeping an eye open.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      Or in other words, the market for single-chip performance is shrinking. The hyperscale folks care about how much physical space given performance takes, but that's likely more energy/performance than chipcount/performance constrained.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    That was my thought too... Facebook, Google/GCE, Amazon/AWS, Azure, U.S. and Chinese governments probably account for most CPU purchases from Intel.
    - deepnotderp 10y ago
      The "super 7" as they're called, account for ~60% of Intel's data center revenue, which accounts for ~60% of their profit. 7 companies provide Intel with 36% of its profit...
      - anoonmoose 10y ago
        I mean, that's bog-standard 80-20 rule stuff, innit?
      - kdeldycke 10y ago
        The "Super 7" are: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Source: http://fortune.com/2015/11/15/intel-super-7/ http://fortune.com/2015/11/15/intel-super-7/
dogma1138 10y ago
It's important to note that none of the processes actually describe a physical size anymore. They used too now it's just PR, a 10nm 14nm or 7nm processes don't actually have anything that is the process "size" in size. Together with various optimization the process name is "analogous" to a hypothetical CMOS lithography with of that scale.
deepnotderp 10y ago
There's a BIG difference between transistors being developed and having sustainable manufacturing processes and good yields. Intel actually taped out an internal chip on 10nm, but then "mysteriously" scrapped it. Likely because of bad yields... And that's not even dealing with the demon of quantum tunneling which IMO will likely kill node shrinks even harder. Finally, the other comment is right, Dennard scaling is dead, and thermals have become the primary constraint in chip design. FinFETs have somewhat helped with this, but it's not enough.
sqeaky 10y ago
Only for some interpretations of Moore's law. The strictest readings count transistors in CPUs. But plenty take it as a general prediction in the doubling of performance of hardware. Computing things still get cheaper as more tech gets included. For example, Someone working in AI or video games can drop a $1000 on a Cuda enabled GPU and get more than a 10x more performance increase then they could reasonably get with that $1000 3 years earlier. This is much more than the two doublings some interpretations of Moore's law predicts. Not all performance increases are going to be inside the most complex part.

cocoa19 10y ago

Why don't you see Moore's law progressing beyond 3nm and maybe even stopping at 7nm or 10nm?

PeCaN 10y ago
Physics comes to mind, also that Moore's law stopped in the strict sense (doubling every 18 months) years ago.
ansible 10y ago
Why don't you see Moore's law progressing beyond 3nm and maybe even stopping at 7nm or 10nm? At that size, defects of just a couple silicon atoms (approximately 0.2nm diameter) starts to become an issue. Photo lithography requires higher frequencies of "light" for smaller features, which also becomes more of a pain to deal with. And that doesn't even get into the quantum effects at that scale, which is whole 'nother barrel of headaches. I'm still surprised at the (seemingly to me) lack of research in molecular nanotechnology. We're rapidly approaching the point where we do need to precisely control the placement of each individual atom for these products. You'd think the boards of directors and major investors would be pushing these companies harder to develop the next generation technologies. Though Wall Street itself barely cares about the next three months.
deepnotderp 10y ago
Yields, quantum effects and lithography problems.

svantana 10y ago

Isn't the real problem that process shrinks have stopped giving performance gains? Broadwell halved the logic area of Haswell (see slide in article), but benchmarks showed improvements of only a few percent. Surely that stagnation can only get worse at 10 nm. If Intel actually saw a huge business case for 10 nm, my guess is they would have found a way by now.

trhway 10y ago
>Broadwell halved the logic area of Haswell (see slide in article), but benchmarks showed improvements of only a few percent. in the presence of competition the Broadwell chip would have double the number of cores of the Haswell chip it was replacing, and thus the modern multithreaded benchmarks would have shown double the performance. Current situation clearly showcases what happens when there is no competition (the experience very familiar to anybody who saw/rode/drove a USSR/Russian made car or aware of the Russian presidential elections history of the last 17 years :)
- kristianp 10y ago
  If you double the cores, you also double the TDP. They can only do that where the application permits, such as servers.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    Or desktops. Or heavy laptops. Current i7s seem designed for the MacBook Pro. That should have been the i5 or i3 segment.
    - wmf 10y ago
      You want a laptop processor hotter than 50W?
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
        It has a fan. There's no need for more watts to make it hotter.

jackals 10y ago

For more than a decade, the Semicon industry has been trying to extend Moore's Law with CO2 laser technology that essentially has not had a generational advance since Moore's article was published. The laser wasn't the only issue, but now that those other barriers are being overcome, it will be the prime one. Far from acceptable cost-of-ownership, and inability to scale, have been known laser limiting factors from the beginning. That makes the hesitancy of companies, such as Intel, ASML/Cymer and Trumpf, to invest in CO2 laser breakthroughs that have been presented to them, more than shocking. The minimum commercial viability of 250W EUV@IF (Intermediate Focus) has still not been achieved. There is no chance of them scaling to the 1kW EUV@IF that Intel has stated is needed for truly sustainable viability.