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It's always been economics. EUV already works. E-beam lithography already works. Carbon nanotube transistors already work. III-V transistors already work. It's
by tedsanders 13y ago
It's always been economics. EUV already works. E-beam lithography already works. Carbon nanotube transistors already work. III-V transistors already work. It's just that none of these technologies work as cheaply as double patterned silicon.
- kev009 13y agoAnd it will be economics that breaks through the cost challenges. If you can do something that nobody else can, it's a nice spot to be, you can even license out the actual implementation. There are companies like IBM that take a more holistic approach to R&D. I'd expect someone like them to prevail in adaptation of new techniques or even paradigm shift.
- hershel 13y agoThe fact the we can't manufacture transistors cheaper doesn't mean we won't see big jumps in compute value.We could seem improvements from fpga's(500x max),approximate computing(100x-1000x), packaging(3x-10x) or the radical option of analog computing(6-9 orders of magnitude for brain simulation etc). Also, there's still huge amount of value to unlock from software, interfaces and the rest.Just look at the iphone where most of the value comes from a great touch interface and an app store. Moore's law is just a bonus.
- sliverstorm 13y ago500x performance improvement from using fpgas? Where do you get this number?
- hershel 13y agoAsics can max out at about 1000x , and zvi orbach has a recent column talking about how to make an fpga with 50% efficiency of asic. http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1322021 http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1322021
- sliverstorm 13y agoI must have misunderstood, I thought you were saying FPGA's will surpass CPU's 500-fold.
- mahyarm 13y agoCould these eventually be as cheap as double patterned silicon?
- tedsanders 13y agoYes, potentially. There are strong research efforts underway for all of them.