When Less is Moore

Dylan McGrath, Editor in Chief, EE Times
12/1/2017 00:01 AM EST

Remember the good old days when blindly following Moore's Law was the blueprint to success in the semiconductor industry? These days, migrating to the next node is much more complicated -- and expensive. Today's chip companies actually have to think.

Soothsayers have been predicting its death since the ink was still drying on Gordon Moore's 1965 paper, aptly titled "The Future of Integrated Electronics." Yet, here it is more than 50 years later and Moore's Law is still the governing principle of the semiconductor industry. Sort of.

The prediction that the number of transistors on a chip will double every 18 months is still taken largely as an article of faith, even though there is some debate about how long the industry can afford to keep up the pace. Virtually everyone agrees that keeping the pace with Moore's Law is getting more difficult. And expensive.

A new paper by Syed Alam and Greg Douglass of Accenture Strategy examines the issues surrounding maintaining compliance with Moore's Law and poses the question: Should we be blindly following it?

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