ARM: Cost of 5nm chip design is astronomical

The past couple of decades, chip makers benefited from shrinking chips to smaller process nodes. This resulted in not only in lower power consumption and higher performance, but also in a reduction of costs. This is now no longer possible and companies will have to focus on new strategies to keep pushing the performance of cutting-edge chips.

EE Times has an interesting article about how chip companies' view diverge on the future of Moore's Law. The article cites Arm chief executive Simon Segars, who predicts few companies will use 5nm as the cost of designing for this process is "astronomical":

Arm chief executive Simon Segars generally agreed. “The cost of designing a 5-nm chip will be astronomical,” limiting the node’s use to a few companies who “can amortize it across multiple designs. Because of the constraints of Moore’s Law, you have to work harder — there’s no freebie in optical scaling anymore.”