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A few questions for those familiar with chip production: 1. How much smaller can we make the silicon process before we run into physical limitations? How many

by imiric 4y ago

A few questions for those familiar with chip production: 1. How much smaller can we make the silicon process before we run into physical limitations? How many years do you think that gives us? 2. What are the most promising alternatives to silicon? Carbon nanotubes, photons? How many years are we realistically away from these being commercially viable?

dotnet00 4y ago
I think we're getting pretty close to Silicon's limits, optimistically maybe 2-3 more node shrinks. After that, I think Gallium Arsenide is the next most accessible material which should have room for a few more nodes. By then hopefully those more exotic technologies like carbon nanotube transistors will be a bit more viable. I'm not much of an expert though, just recalling what was covered in one of my lectures.
- NovaVeles 4y ago
  I am not so keen on photon transistors, at least not in the short term. I have seen them proposed for decades but progress has been slow at best. Maybe some folks will figure it out and we will make that leap but current progress is not looking great. As for Carbon nano tubes, I'm not too familiar with the applications of this for transistors but it does sound like something that can get us a little further down the road. All this arm chair speculation. All the people that work on these things would know far better than me. And I mean ALL the people! ;)
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    I agree regarding photonic transistors, I have a hard time seeing how those would scale down to even current transistor sizes/densities. Especially given that they'd probably have to rely on much shorter wavelength light, which comes with its own issues. Carbon Nanotube transistors are fairly promising though, they're structured similarly to regular transistors but can have some neat properties like ballistic transport regimes (meaning zero resistance when enough current is going through), better heat dissipation and ability to handle much higher currents. IIRC they're also very tunable with the bandgap controlled by the shape of the tube. Main issue with CNT transistors is just that - as with most things involving CNTs - we need production methods that are significantly more consistent with the shape and quality of tube they produce. We'd need to be able to print billions of tubes per chip with almost the exact same shape to compete with traditional semiconductors.
MangoCoffee 4y ago
>What are the most promising alternatives to silicon? 3d stacking and chiplet
- Night_Thastus 4y ago
  Those aren't alternatives to silicon, and are already in use.
ksec 4y ago
If you were to play Semi-God where you could pick up each atom, we still have at least 200x before we hit atomic feature size. But before you are excited about 200x, that is only about 10 full node step, or roughly 20 years of progress ( assuming the rate stay the same which we all know wont happen ). So let say about ~30 years. 2050 We have a very decent roadmap all the way till 2030. Till roughly around TSMC 1nm and 0.8nm. So 2nm in 2025, 1.4nm in 2027, 1nm in 2029. Intel seems to be executing well so far, so they might have a minor lead by 2025/2026. And may be able to reach 0.8nm by 2030. We used to question whether there is enough market to sustain the development of leading node. ( Which was the number one issue on the death of Moore's law, but media doesn't mention it much if at all ) But given the current market size of multiple Trillion Dollar companies, and geo-political willingness to invest into silicon. I dont see we have a market / funding problem for the next 10 years. So yes, you could get a GPU that perform close to a GTX4090 by 2033 and it cost you less than $200.
- imiric 4y ago
  Thanks for your informed opinion. > we still have at least 200x before we hit atomic feature size How so? The size of the silicon atom is 0.2nm, so we're already close to dealing with atomic scales. It seems likely we'll switch to an element like gallium, as a nearby comment mentioned, before we reach even 1nm node size. At that point the CNT manufacturing process would have matured beyond the current experimental, but promising, stage.[1] We can only speculate, but I reckon these changes will happen much earlier than 2050. > So yes, you could get a GPU that perform close to a GTX4090 by 2033 and it cost you less than $200. I sure hope we get to that point much sooner than that. :) NVIDIA and AMD are squeezing this performance at the expense of power, heat and size. Apple has proven it's possible to do this much more efficiently, but their silicon is still incredibly large compared to older generations. If we can get a better wafer yield with another material or process, while also reducing power and heat, then the only drawback for consumers could be cost, which should continue to go down. Though if NVIDIA has any say in the matter, they'll surely continue to price gouge consumers, as they've done this generation. [1]: https://news.mit.edu/2020/carbon-nanotube-transistors-factory-0601 https://news.mit.edu/2020/carbon-nanotube-transistors-factor...
  - 4y ago

by imiric 4y ago

dotnet00 4y ago

I think we're getting pretty close to Silicon's limits, optimistically maybe 2-3 more node shrinks. After that, I think Gallium Arsenide is the next most accessible material which should have room for a few more nodes. By then hopefully those more exotic technologies like carbon nanotube transistors will be a bit more viable. I'm not much of an expert though, just recalling what was covered in one of my lectures.

NovaVeles 4y ago
I am not so keen on photon transistors, at least not in the short term. I have seen them proposed for decades but progress has been slow at best. Maybe some folks will figure it out and we will make that leap but current progress is not looking great. As for Carbon nano tubes, I'm not too familiar with the applications of this for transistors but it does sound like something that can get us a little further down the road. All this arm chair speculation. All the people that work on these things would know far better than me. And I mean ALL the people! ;)
- dotnet00 4y ago
  I agree regarding photonic transistors, I have a hard time seeing how those would scale down to even current transistor sizes/densities. Especially given that they'd probably have to rely on much shorter wavelength light, which comes with its own issues. Carbon Nanotube transistors are fairly promising though, they're structured similarly to regular transistors but can have some neat properties like ballistic transport regimes (meaning zero resistance when enough current is going through), better heat dissipation and ability to handle much higher currents. IIRC they're also very tunable with the bandgap controlled by the shape of the tube. Main issue with CNT transistors is just that - as with most things involving CNTs - we need production methods that are significantly more consistent with the shape and quality of tube they produce. We'd need to be able to print billions of tubes per chip with almost the exact same shape to compete with traditional semiconductors.

MangoCoffee 4y ago

>What are the most promising alternatives to silicon? 3d stacking and chiplet

Night_Thastus 4y ago
Those aren't alternatives to silicon, and are already in use.

ksec 4y ago

If you were to play Semi-God where you could pick up each atom, we still have at least 200x before we hit atomic feature size. But before you are excited about 200x, that is only about 10 full node step, or roughly 20 years of progress ( assuming the rate stay the same which we all know wont happen ). So let say about ~30 years. 2050 We have a very decent roadmap all the way till 2030. Till roughly around TSMC 1nm and 0.8nm. So 2nm in 2025, 1.4nm in 2027, 1nm in 2029. Intel seems to be executing well so far, so they might have a minor lead by 2025/2026. And may be able to reach 0.8nm by 2030. We used to question whether there is enough market to sustain the development of leading node. ( Which was the number one issue on the death of Moore's law, but media doesn't mention it much if at all ) But given the current market size of multiple Trillion Dollar companies, and geo-political willingness to invest into silicon. I dont see we have a market / funding problem for the next 10 years. So yes, you could get a GPU that perform close to a GTX4090 by 2033 and it cost you less than $200.

imiric 4y ago
Thanks for your informed opinion. > we still have at least 200x before we hit atomic feature size How so? The size of the silicon atom is 0.2nm, so we're already close to dealing with atomic scales. It seems likely we'll switch to an element like gallium, as a nearby comment mentioned, before we reach even 1nm node size. At that point the CNT manufacturing process would have matured beyond the current experimental, but promising, stage.[1] We can only speculate, but I reckon these changes will happen much earlier than 2050. > So yes, you could get a GPU that perform close to a GTX4090 by 2033 and it cost you less than $200. I sure hope we get to that point much sooner than that. :) NVIDIA and AMD are squeezing this performance at the expense of power, heat and size. Apple has proven it's possible to do this much more efficiently, but their silicon is still incredibly large compared to older generations. If we can get a better wafer yield with another material or process, while also reducing power and heat, then the only drawback for consumers could be cost, which should continue to go down. Though if NVIDIA has any say in the matter, they'll surely continue to price gouge consumers, as they've done this generation. [1]: https://news.mit.edu/2020/carbon-nanotube-transistors-factory-0601 https://news.mit.edu/2020/carbon-nanotube-transistors-factor...
- 4y ago