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As Moore’s Law turns 50, computer chips continue to get cheaper and more powerful
On April 19, 1965, an article was published in Electronics Magazine by a electrical engineering
researcher from CalTech, theorizing that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would
double every year. (In plain English: computer chips would double in power.) The researcher, Gordon
Moore, went on to found Intel. He revised his estimate ten years later, saying that computing power
would in fact double every two years.
His observation has underpinned the advances in computing for the last 40 years, from personal
computers to laptops, smartphone, and basically anything else with a computer chip in it.
Although there have been many doomsayers over the years—including Moore himself—his
observation has continued to hold true. And even as we potentially reach the physical limitations of
silicon—the material used in modern computer chips—scientists have been discovering other materials
for semiconductors that could see Moore’s Law extended for years to come.
Gallium nitride may allow us to make smaller, more powerful chips than possible with silicon alone,
and multiple companies are trying to build the first quantum computer, including Google. Quantum
computing, if achievable, would provide “orders of magnitude” of improvement over silicon chips,
quantum computing company D-Wave Systems’ CEO Vern Brownell told Gigaom.
Much like another type of chip, it seems, when silicon chips first popped, engineers just couldn’t stop.
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IBM has built the most powerful computer chips in the world
July 09, 2015
Since 1965, we have held onto the belief that computing power will double every two years, as argued
in a paper by Gordon Moore, the eventual founder of Intel. But in recent years, scientists have been
straining to keep Moore’s Law alive, as we start to approach the physical limit of how small we can
Amake silicon chips.
Today (July 9), IBM has announced it has proved it’s possible to produce chips just 7 nanometers
wide—or about the width of a few strands of DNA.
“Staying on Moore’s Law is extremely difficult.”
Past efforts to make chips this small have either required too much power to run, or haven’t been able
to conduct electricity efficiently enough. IBM’s new process involves using Silicon Germanium—an
alloy the company has been using since 1989—for its transistors, and a new way to etch the chips,
called extreme ultraviolet lithography.
Dr. Michael Liehr (left) of SUNY
Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and Bala Haran (right) of IBM
Research inspect a wafer of 7nm test chips in a clean room in Albany.(Flickr/IBM Research)
According to IBM, this could lead to a 50% performance and power boost over chips that are on the
market today, effectively keeping Moore’s Law more or less intact for the time being.
Mukesh Khare, IBM’s head of semiconductor research, tells Quartz that the breakthrough didn’t come
easily. “This announcement clarifies that staying on Moore’s Law is extremely difficult,” he says.
“The thing we can’t scale is an atom.”
IBM’s research on the project, part of a $3 billion, five-year investment into development of new chip
technology, was conducted in Albany, New York, in conjunction with a local chip-making plant owned
by GlobalFoundries, and with Samsung and the State University of New York.
While Intel is struggling to bring processors built on 10nm transistors to market, IBM’s research
indicates that we haven’t yet reached the smallest transistor possible. “We are able to demonstrate
that the technology can be scaled to 7 nm,” Kare says. “Can we do 5 nanometer? Well, we’re gonna
try.”
“The [only] thing we can’t scale is an atom.”