POET Technologies Inc.
I hope you will all forgive me but I thought it important that we understand what Moore’s Law is. Gordon Moore, a founder of the company Intel, wrote an article in the magazine Electronics on April 19, 1965 and stated this; I quote:
“the cost advantage continues to increase as the technology evolves toward the production of larger and larger circuit functions on a single semiconductor substrate. For simple circuits, the cost per component is nearly inversely proportional to the number of components, the result of the equivalent piece of semiconductor in the equivalent package containing more components. But as components are added, decreased yields more than compensate for the increased complexity, tending to raise the cost per component. Thus there is a minimum cost at any given time in the evolution of the technology.” The complexity for minimum component costs has in-creased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years”
This statement has been widely though incorrectly interpreted as the number of transistors in unit area of microprocessors double every 2 years. In fact, it has occurred more like every 18 months over the last 55 years. It is very important to note that Moore’s Law refers to complexity and minimum component costs and not to the number of transistors.
It may be of interest to note that Intel offered a $10,000.00 US reward for a pristine copy of this magazine; it was won by an Englishman from Surrey UK who found it under the floorboards of his home, such was their generosity for tearing up his bedroom.
Most people’s concept of a law probably wanders into the realms of the legal profession. In microprocessor terms it is in the realms of mathematics and physics. Those who have studied both will be familiar with Newton’s Laws of Motion, or the Inverse Square Law or perhaps the 3 Laws of Thermodynamics. The understanding is that a Law is meant to be an absolute statement which results in a totally predictable outcome, so that when mathematics is applied to it, the outcome is inevitable. In fact, even these laws have sometimes been subject to revision. Newton’s Laws of Motion (1680’s) were revised by Einstein (1905), for example, because the laws vary when there is very high relative velocity to an observer.
Moore’s Law is a statement of a qualitative kind which, so far, has been approximately correct. I include a graph which demonstrates this. It is copied from Wkipedia and I cannot get a better image. For those who are interested the y-axis is a logarithmic scale and the x-axis is time proportional. This produces a straight line graph but it is, in fact, an exponential curve if the y-axis was proportional. Exponential means that as time passes the number of transistors per unit area not only increase but the rate of increase accelerates.
The problem with Moore’s Law is that quantum theory and thermodynamics mean that it will cease inevitably as transistor size decreases. That is happening now and is best demonstrated by the staggering costs to change nodal size and concept. It has been stated the Intel’s efforts to produce the 3D Ivy Bridge processor at 22 nM cost over $40 billion US in R&D some 2 years ago and that the 14 nM nodal variety is imminent. I have no idea of the cost of this change.
What is evident is that smaller companies are having increasing perhaps terminal difficulties matching this. I have read analyst reports suggesting they will not or cannot compete and this may lead to collapses, takeovers or bankruptcy. They suggest substantial disruption in the near future. Intel offers future trends at smaller nodal sizes over the next 6 -8 years.
It seems to me, at very small nodal sizes, such as 5 nM., you are approaching the size of an atom (.25nM) and the physical behavior here becomes less and less predictable. A number of physicists e.g. Michio Kaku, predict the end. It may be better to consider that Moore’s law is eroding and dying. I do not think POET, at 100nM, has the number of transistors that the latest Intel microprocessor has, though it will have a much higher clock count and light transfer. I believe, if processing is the measurement that’s used rather than transistor numbers and cost, then for an unspecified period longer it is reasonable to suggest that, in this period, the qualitative law become Taylor’s Law.
David
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POET Technologies Inc.
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