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Linley Newsletter

Intel, Foundries Diverge at 10nm

September 1, 2015

Author: David Kanter

The semiconductor industry has entered an age of uncertainty. As Gordon Moore once wrote, “No exponential is forever, but forever can be delayed.” Moore’s Law has been a tenet of faith for the industry over the last 50 years, but the faithful are losing hope. For the leading foundries, recent process nodes not only failed to halve transistor cost, but saw an increase in cost—a stunning reversal. Moore’s Law is about more than just transistor density: it’s about economics and reducing cost. As Part 1 of this article discussed, double patterning, EUV, and other techniques are expensive. Safeguarding Moore’s Law requires judiciously adopting new technology, using them only where the advantages are sufficient to deliver the cost reductions that the industry expects.

Intel, in contrast, has loudly proclaimed that “forever” is still years away and that its transistor costs continue to drop at each new node, following the historical trend. The company continues to move its products to ever finer geometries, supporting its claim of decreasing transistor cost in new nodes. However, Intel recently announced that its traditional pace of innovation has become unsustainable. Given the complexity of future technologies, instead of a new node every 24 months, a cadence of 30–36 months is more realistic.

How can these companies have such contradictory views of Moore’s Law? Both are true; the contrast merely illustrates that, as in the tale of the blind men and the elephant, perspective matters. Intel and the foundries come from radically different starting points, focus on different applications, and impose different design-rule restrictions. Ultimately, the two camps seem to be converging, and Intel’s success firmly indicates that the foundries have a viable path to continue Moore’s Law.