Moore's Law was founded by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel.
Moore). Its content is: under the condition of constant price, the number of transistors that can be accommodated on the integrated circuit doubles every 18 months, and the performance doubles. In other words, the computer performance that can be bought for one dollar will more than double every 18 months. This law reveals the speed of information technology progress.
Although this trend has lasted for more than half a century, Moore's law should still be regarded as observation or speculation, rather than physical or natural laws. It is predicted that this law will last at least until 20 15 or 2020 [1]. However, the update growth of the international semiconductor technology development roadmap in 20 10 slowed down at the end of 20 13, and the transistor number density is expected to double every three years in the following period. [ 1]
Overview of 1 Moore's Law
1965 April19, electronic magazine (electronic
Magazine) published an article written by Moore (then an engineer of Fairchild Semiconductor Company) on page 1 14, which predicted that the number of transistors and resistors integrated on semiconductor chips would double every year.
1975, Moore published a paper at the IEEE International Conference on Electronic Components. According to the actual situation at that time, Moore's law was revised, and it was changed from "doubling every year" to "doubling every two years", but now the popular saying is "doubling every 18 months". However, in September of 1997, Moore said in an interview that he never said "doubling every 18 months" and the SEMATECH roadmap follows a 24-month cycle.
Generally speaking, if IC of the same specification is produced under the same area wafer, with the progress of technology, the output of IC can be doubled every year and a half, that is to say, the cost can be reduced by 50% every year and a half, and the average annual cost can be reduced by more than 30%. As far as Moore's law is concerned, IC technology advances once every year and a half.
Moore's Law is a simple rule of thumb to evaluate the progress of semiconductor technology. Its significance lies in that in the long run, IC manufacturing technology is advancing in a straight line, which makes IC products continuously reduce costs, improve performance and increase functions.
1998, Zhang Zhongmou, chairman of TSMC, said that Moore's law was quite effective in the past 30 years and should still be applicable in the next 10 to 15 years.
However, a recent study found that the era of "Moore's Law" will be withdrawn, because the cost demand of research and laboratory is very high, and few enterprises have the financial resources to invest in the establishment and maintenance of chip factories. Moreover, the process is getting closer and closer to the physical limit of semiconductors, and it is difficult to shrink it again.
Due to the uniqueness of high-purity silicon, the higher the integration, the cheaper the transistor, which produces the economic benefits of Moore's Law. In the early 1960s, the price of a transistor was about $65,438+00, but as the transistor became smaller and smaller, when it could fit 65,438+0,000 transistors on a hair, the price of each transistor was only one thousandth of a cent. According to relevant statistics, according to the price of 654.38+ million times multiplication, IBM704 computer is 85 cents, IBM709 is reduced to 654.38+07 cents, while IBM's IBM360 system computer, which cost 5 billion yuan to develop in the mid-1960s, has become 3.0 cents. The definition of Moore's Law can be summarized into the following three versions:
The number of integrated circuits on an integrated circuit chip doubles every 18 months.
The performance of microprocessors will double or the price will drop by half every 18 months.
The performance of a computer that can be bought for one dollar doubles every 18 months.
Among the above statements, the first statement is the most common, while the second and third statements all involve the price factor, and their essence is the same. Although the three statements have their own merits, one thing is the same, that is, the period of "doubling" is 18 months. As for the "number of circuits" integrated on an integrated circuit chip, it is a matter of opinion whether it is "the performance of the whole machine" or "the performance that one dollar can buy". [2]
2 Discover background editing
As early as 1959, Fairchild, a famous American semiconductor manufacturer, first introduced the planar transistor, and then introduced the planar integrated circuit in 196 1 year. This planar manufacturing process uses so-called "lithography" technology to form elements of semiconductor circuits, such as diodes, triodes, resistors and capacitors, on polished silicon wafers.
If the precision of "lithography" is continuously improved, the density of components will also increase accordingly, which has great development potential. Therefore, planar technology is considered as "the industrial link of the whole semiconductor" and the technical basis of Moore's Law.
From 65438 to 0965, Moore, then director of the R&D laboratory of Fairchild Semiconductor Company, was invited to write an observation and comment report for the 35th anniversary special issue of Electronics magazine, entitled "Filling Integrated Circuits with More Components". When Moore began to plot data, he found an amazing trend: each new chip contains about twice the capacity of its predecessor, and each chip was produced within 18-24 months after the previous chip was produced.
If this trend continues, the computing power will increase exponentially with time. Moore's observation data, which later became Moore's law, describes the trend that continues to this day and is still extremely accurate.
It is also found that this is not only applicable to the description of memory chips, but also can accurately explain the development of processor capacity and disk drive storage capacity. This law has become the basis of performance prediction in many industries. In 26 years, the number of transistors on the chip has increased by more than 3,200 times, from 2,300 in the first 4004 introduced by 197 1 to 7.5 million in the Pentium II processor.
3 Discovery Character Editor
Gordon Moore (Gordon
Moore, 1929-): one of the founders of Intel.
103, Gordon Moore was born in Pesca Dino, San Francisco, California. My father didn't go to school much. /kloc-started to support his family and get married at the age of 0/7.
Gordon Moore
Xiao Guan, my mother just graduated from middle school. After graduating from high school, he entered the famous chemistry major in Berkeley, California, and realized his boyhood dream.
1950, Moore got his bachelor's degree, and then he continued his studies and got his doctorate in physical chemistry in 1954.
1965, Moore's law was put forward.
Another way of saying it
Although Moore's law is based on Gordon Moore (Gordon
Moore), but Moore's law was not first put forward by Moore, but by Professor Carver Meade of California Institute of Technology.
Meade was the first person to notice Moore's Law, which holds that the increase in the output of transistors and other products will lead to the decrease in their prices. Meade pointed out that if the computer processing power at a given price doubles every two years, the price of computer processing equipment at that price will be reduced by half in the same period.
4 legal verification editor
Universal verification
In 1975, there were nearly 65,000 elements in a new charge front-end device memory chip, which was consistent with the prediction of 1965. According to the statistics released by Intel, the number of transistors on a single chip has increased from 19765438+2300 on the 4004 processor to 1997.
In 2008, there were 7.5 million Pentium II processors, an increase of 3,200 times in 26 years. According to the prediction of "doubling every two years", these 26 years should include 13 doubling cycles, and the number of components integrated on the chip should increase by 2n times after each cycle (0≤n≤ 12), so the number of components after 13 cycles, that is, 26 years, is quite close to the actual growth multiple of 3,200 times.
Element verification
Moore's Law
Some people also examine the correctness of Moore's Law from the three elements of personal computer (PC): microprocessor chip, semiconductor memory and system software.
On the microprocessor side, from 8086 and 8088 in 1979 to 80286 in 1982, 80386 in 1985, 80486 in 1989 and Pentium in 1993, At the same time, the memory capacity of PC is expanded from the earliest 480k to 8M, 16M, which is more in line with Moore's Law.
In terms of system software, due to the limitation of storage capacity, the scale and function of early computers were greatly limited. With the exponential growth of memory capacity according to Moore's Law, the system software is no longer confined to the narrow space, and the number of lines of program code it contains also increases sharply: 1975 Basic's source code is only 4,000 lines, and it has grown to about 500,000 lines in 20 years. The first edition of Microsoft Word, 1982, contained 27,000 lines of code, which increased to about 2 million lines after 20 years. After drawing the curve of its development speed, it is found that the growth rate of software scale and complexity even exceeds Moore's law. The development of system software in turn increases the demand for processors and memory chips, thus stimulating the faster development of integrated circuits.
Moore's law is not the law of mathematics and physics, but the analysis and prediction of development trend. Therefore, whether it is expressed in words or calculated quantitatively, a certain margin should be left. In this sense, Moore's prediction is accurate and valuable, so it will be recognized by people in the industry and have a great response.
5 Improved evolutionary editing
check against the authoritative text
1975, Moore delivered a paper at the annual academic conference of IEEE of the International Telecommunication Union, and re-examined and revised the growth rate of "density doubling every year" according to the actual situation at that time. According to Moore himself in an interview with the editor of Scientific American in September 1997, he changed "doubling every year" to "doubling every two years". In fact, the more accurate time is the average of the two: 18 months.
develop
Moore's second law: since Moore's law was put forward 30 years ago, the performance of integrated circuit chips has indeed been greatly improved; On the other hand, Intel is high.
People at the top have begun to notice that the cost of the chip factory is also increasing accordingly. From 65438 to 0995, robert noyce, Chairman of Intel's Board of Directors, foresaw that Moore's Law would be restricted by economic factors. In the same year, Moore wrote in The Economist: "What I am most worried about now is the increase in cost ... This is another exponential curve". His statement is called Moore's second law.
New Moore's Law: The expression of "New Moore's Law" appeared in China IT professional media, which means that the growth rate of the number of Internet hosts and users in China will double every six months. Experts predict that this trend will continue in the next few years.
6 Introduction of meaning
Moore's law summarizes the speed of information technology progress. In the 40 years since Moore's Law was applied, computers have changed from mysterious and inaccessible behemoths to indispensable tools for most people. Information technology has entered countless ordinary families from laboratories, the Internet has connected the whole world, and multimedia audio-visual equipment has enriched everyone's life.
Due to the uniqueness of high-purity silicon, the higher the integration, the cheaper the transistor, which produces the economic benefits of Moore's Law. In the early 1960s, the price of a transistor was about $65,438+00, but as the transistor became smaller and smaller until it was small enough to put 65,438+0,000 transistors on a hair, the price of each transistor was only one thousandth of a cent. According to relevant statistics, according to the price of 654.38+ million times multiplication, IBM704 computer is 654.38+0, IBM709 is reduced to 20 cents, while IBM's IBM360 system computer, which cost 5 billion in the mid-1960s, has become 3.5 cents.
Moore's law is of great significance to the whole world. When reviewing the progress of semiconductor chip industry for more than 40 years and looking forward to its future, information technology experts believe that Moore's Law may still be applicable in the future. But as transistor circuits gradually approach the performance limit, this law will eventually come to an end. For more than 40 years, the integration trend of semiconductor chips, as predicted by Moore, has promoted the development of the entire information technology industry and brought changes to the lives of thousands of families.
7 development prospects
Moore's law has been published for more than 40 years, and people are not surprised to see that the level of semiconductor chip manufacturing technology has improved at a dizzying speed. Intel's
The main frequency of microprocessor chip Pentium4 has reached 2GHz. In 20 1 1 year, a chip with 1 billion transistors and 1 billion instructions per second was introduced. Whether this development speed will continue indefinitely is a question that people think about.
From a technical point of view, with the increase of circuit density on silicon chip, its complexity and error rate will also increase exponentially, and it is almost impossible to test the chip comprehensively and thoroughly. Once the line width on the chip reaches the nanometer scale (10-9 meters), which is equivalent to the size of only a few molecules, in this case, the physical and chemical properties of the material will change qualitatively, which makes the semiconductor devices using the current technology unable to work normally, and Moore's Law will come to an end.
From an economic point of view, as stated in Moore's second law, if the construction cost of a chip factory is $2-3 billion, when it is reduced to 0. 1 micron, the line size will soar to $10 billion, which is more than the investment of a nuclear power plant. More and more companies quit the chip industry because they can't afford the funds. [ 1]
Physicist Kakumichio (Inafu
Kaku) is a professor of theoretical physics at City University of new york. In an interview on 20 12, he said Moore's Law was gradually collapsing after 47 years of dominating the chip industry. This will have a great impact on computer processing. In the next decade or so, Moore's Law will collapse, and the computing power cannot maintain rapid exponential growth only by standard silicon material technology.
Kakumichio said that the two main reasons for Moore's Law's failure are high temperature and electric leakage. This is also the reason for the end of the life of silicon materials. Calais Xiong Ji said that this is quite different from the decline of Moore's Law originally predicted by scientists. Scientists should be able to continue to tap the potential of silicon components, so as to maintain the vitality of Moore's law in the next few years; But after technologies such as 3D chips run out of potential, they will reach the limit.
Scientists and industry analysts in various fields have predicted the failure of Moore's Law. However, researchers also suggest that Moore's Law is still valid today due to the continuous improvement of chip structure and components. Even Intel, which is known as "based on Moore's Law", has announced that Moore's Law, which has entered the "uncle" level, will not continue to lead the development of electronic equipment as new transistors with technologies such as nanowires gradually replace traditional semiconductor transistors.
8 breakthrough research editor
20 12, 10/October 28th, scientists from IBM Research Institute in the United States declared that the newly developed carbon nanotube chip conforms to the "Moore's Law" cycle. According to Moore's law, the integration of computer chips doubles every 18 months, and the price is halved. Traditional transistors are made of silicon. However, in the past 20 1 1 year, silicon transistors have approached the atomic level and reached the physical limit. Due to the natural properties of this substance, it is difficult to break through the running speed and performance of silicon transistors.
Researchers from IBM have placed more than 654.38+00000 carbon nano-transistors on a silicon chip, and the electrons of carbon nano-transistors run faster than silicon devices. They are also the most ideal structural forms of transistors. These excellent performances will be the reason to replace silicon transistors. Combined with the new chip design architecture, future microchips will realize computer innovation.
The researchers found that the electrons trapped in the semiconductor with a layer of oxide or metal on the interface are easily sucked into the air, and the electrons hidden on the interface will form a layer of charge. Coulomb repulsion between charged particles in the electronic layer will also make the electrons easily released from silicon. By applying a small amount of voltage, they effectively extract electrons from the silicon structure and then put them in the air, so that they can travel in nano-scale channels without encountering any collision or scattering. [3]
9 biological application editor
In 20 13 years, scientists applied Moore's law to the study of the complexity of life on earth, and their results showed that the existence time of organic life far exceeded.
The earth itself. The researchers replaced the transistors in Moore's Law with nucleotides-the basis of the genetic material of life-and the circuits with the genetic material of mathematical calculation. The calculation results show that life first appeared 10 billion years ago, which is much older than the predicted age of 4.5 billion years on the earth. Researchers say that when the solar system was formed, there may be bacteria-like organisms, or some simple nucleotides existing in ancient areas of the Milky Way may come to Earth through comets, asteroids or other space debris. This hypothesis is called student theory, also known as pan-species theory. Some scientists believe that there is still life entering the earth in the form of pan-species theory until now. [