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Intel: Moore's Law will continue through 7nm chips
pcworld.com ^ | Feb 22, 2015 12:00 PM | Mark Hachman

Posted on 02/22/2015 4:47:42 PM PST by ckilmer

Eventually, the conventional ways of manufacturing microprocessors, graphics chips, and other silicon components will run out of steam. According to Intel researchers speaking at the ISSCC conference this week, however, we still have headroom for a few more years.

Intel plans to present several papers this week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, one of the key academic conferences for papers on chip design. Intel senior fellow Mark Bohr will also appear on a panel Monday night to discuss the challenges of moving from today's 14nm chips to the 10nm manufacturing node and beyond.

(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: 7nm; chips; computer; computerchips; intel; mooreslaw
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1 posted on 02/22/2015 4:47:42 PM PST by ckilmer
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To: ckilmer

Will they be able to make chips from graphene?


2 posted on 02/22/2015 4:50:37 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: ckilmer

Intel is currently at the 14 nanometer mark.

“In a conference call with reporters, Bohr said that Intel believes that the current pace of semiconductor technology can continue beyond 10nm technology (expected in 2016) or so, and that 7nm manufacturing (expected in 2018) can be done without moving to expensive, esoteric manufacturing methods like ultraviolet lasers. “

Back in November another article was posted on this topic.
Intel Sees Path to Extend Moore’s Law to 7nm

Nov 24, 2014 2:08 PM EST

By Michael J. Miller
http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/none/329835-intel-sees-path-to-extend-moore-s-law-to-7nm


3 posted on 02/22/2015 4:50:54 PM PST by ckilmer (q)
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To: ckilmer
IIRC, 7nm is five Si atoms.
4 posted on 02/22/2015 4:51:04 PM PST by Steely Tom (Vote GOP for A Slower Handbasket)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Will they be able to make chips from graphene?
................
Good question. Don’t know. There’s been a huge amount of smoke concerning graphene but so far its been just smoke. In any case the chip manufacturers won’t jump from current methods until they have to. That will come in about four years according to the article


5 posted on 02/22/2015 4:53:25 PM PST by ckilmer (q)
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To: Steely Tom

IIRC, 7nm is five Si atoms.
..............
Thanks. For I surely have no understanding of the underlying physical laws. Do you know why 5 silicon atoms and not 4 or 6 is the limit?


6 posted on 02/22/2015 4:56:58 PM PST by ckilmer (q)
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To: Steely Tom

You gotta problem with that?
The last camera I worked on printed 1 micron.
They’re getting better.


7 posted on 02/22/2015 5:01:36 PM PST by sasquatch
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To: ckilmer

It seems like microprocessors have been getting smaller and faster for quite some time now.


8 posted on 02/22/2015 5:02:14 PM PST by SamAdams76
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To: ckilmer
7nm manufacturing (expected in 2018) can be done without moving to expensive, esoteric manufacturing methods like ultraviolet lasers. “

Dang, for a second there thought they were talking about using dark matter and dark energy, phew :)

9 posted on 02/22/2015 5:04:55 PM PST by The Cajun (Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Mark Levin, Mike Lee, Louie Gohmert....Nuff said.)
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To: ckilmer
Did somebody say chips!

Banana Chips

10 posted on 02/22/2015 5:04:59 PM PST by SeeSharp
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To: ckilmer

Thanks. For I surely have no understanding of the underlying physical laws. Do you know why 5 silicon atoms and not 4 or 6 is the limit?


It’s not 5 vs. 4 or 6. It’s to put into some sort of perspective just how small 7nm really is.

Basically what happens is that there are doublings not in terms of feature length but in terms of area (7 squared is about half of 10 squared).

So it says that there just aren’t too many doublings left.


11 posted on 02/22/2015 5:12:15 PM PST by 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Without a high yield, high production process using Extreme UV, the semiconductor area is in big trouble.


12 posted on 02/22/2015 5:15:45 PM PST by Zathras
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To: SamAdams76

It seems like microprocessors have been getting smaller and faster for quite some time now.
........
Yeah cell phones have the same power as laptops of 8 years ago.

“Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969, when it placed two astronauts on the moon.”
Deep Blue is another supercomputer that you might have heard of. It is the machine best known for winning against world chess champion Garry Kasparov with a score of 2:1 in a 6-game match. That happened on May 11, 1997, when Deep Blue was the 259th most powerful computer in the world. It boasted a performance figure of 11.38 GFLOPS and could evaluate 200 million positions on the chessboard each second (although still not good enough to run Crysis, we suppose). Today, some 17 years later, the ARM Mali-T628MP6 GPU inside the Exynos-based Samsung Galaxy S5 outputs 142 GFLOPS. And the 192-core GPU on the Tegra K1 SoC produces an even more impressive peak of 364 GFLOPS. Sure, these might not be superior to Deep Blue when it comes to playing chess, but in terms of brute, number-crunching power, these mobile graphics processors stand stronger.

So yeah, technology is definitely advancing, and it is doing so at a rapid pace. What takes a supercomputer to calculate today will most likely be a piece of cake for the smartphones (or whatever they evolve into) that we’ll be using in 2020, just like today’s smartphones have the processing potential of a vintage supercomputer. What we’ll be investing this computational power into, however, is a whole different topic.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/A-modern-smartphone-or-a-vintage-supercomputer-which-is-more-powerful_id57149


13 posted on 02/22/2015 5:16:03 PM PST by ckilmer (q)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Will they be able to make chips from graphene?

...

The last I looked, not a single commercial product is based on graphene. The only money being made is supplying graphene to researchers, but I think many make their own.


14 posted on 02/22/2015 5:16:07 PM PST by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
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To: ckilmer

It’s all so crazy. Who woulda thought 10 years ago this was possible.

Science scares me. I am a simple caveman.


15 posted on 02/22/2015 5:17:44 PM PST by T-Bone Texan (The time is now to form up into leaderless cells of 5 men or less.)
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To: Moonman62

Search the keyword “3Dprinting” to see articles on graphene.


16 posted on 02/22/2015 5:17:50 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: ckilmer

I think Moore’s law ended a few years ago. Microprocessors that came out a few years ago are still expensive and the newer chips aren’t much more powerful.


17 posted on 02/22/2015 5:20:20 PM PST by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
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To: 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten

Ok the part that I do understand without understanding is that when the chips are too small the light or electrons bleed through the walls of the circuits so there’s interference.

what I don’t understand is how they can get smaller without increasing the bleed.

stronger walls? more finely etched circuits?


18 posted on 02/22/2015 5:20:45 PM PST by ckilmer (q)
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To: The Cajun
>> 7nm manufacturing (expected in 2018) can be done without moving to expensive, esoteric manufacturing methods like ultraviolet lasers.
>
> Dang, for a second there thought they were talking about using dark matter and dark energy, phew :)

It's not esoteric until they're using Octarine lasers on dark matter/energy.

19 posted on 02/22/2015 5:23:33 PM PST by OneWingedShark (Q: Why am I here? A: To do Justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God.)
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To: Zathras

Without a high yield, high production process using Extreme UV, the semiconductor area is in big trouble.
.............
According to the article they can continue to use the same manufacturing process down to 7 nanometers or until 2018. Then they have to make the great leap out of current manufacturing processes to something else? — to get smaller...

What that will be is anyone’s guess but likely they’ve been working on perfecting this leap for a decade or more.


20 posted on 02/22/2015 5:24:00 PM PST by ckilmer (q)
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