Intel: Moore's Law shows no sign of slowing down

Moore’s Law and transistor scaling are not showing any sign of slowing down, but they are showing signs of changing, and this is very good for consumers and large data centers. Intel has been introducing new generations of process technology on time and on a 2-year cadence for many generations. The first 32nm products started shipping exactly 2 years after the first 45nm products, before any others in our industry, and the 22nm technology is on track for production readiness in late 2011. Intel’s research group has a variety of novel transistor and interconnect ideas in the “pipeline” including III-V channel materials, multi-gate transistors, 3-D stacking and others. In the end, not all of the ideas explored in research make it to the manufacturing stage, but the good ones do! The goals of scaling are changing to better meet today’s market requirements. Achieving very high operating frequencies is no longer the prime target for new microprocessors. Instead, the goal has shifted to delivering higher performance combined with lower power. “Power efficiency” is the main scaling goal for chips used both in small hand held devices and in large data centers. So, the goals have shifted a bit, and the technology options are very different, but the value and excitement of driving Moore’s Law remain undiminished.