1965 In April, Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel Corporation, published an article in Electronics magazine predicting the future development trend of integrated circuits, which is the original body of Moore's Law that people often say later. However, 40 years later, with the development of semiconductor industry, some people have begun to bombard Moore's Law, claiming that it will be invalid within 10 years. So, how much do we know about this famous law with great influence, and how deep is its significance? Why does microelectronics give him such a high evaluation? What does Moore's Law bring us? Will Moore's Law really expire in 10? Next, let's enter the legendary world of Moore's Law and explore its ins and outs!
The original appearance of Moore's law
In an article published by Moore in Electronics magazine, there is a sentence: "Every 12 months, the number of transistors per square inch of silicon wafer will double." This is the most well-known expression of Moore's Law, and we might as well call it "transistor density multiplication law". In this article, the author uses the following chart to illustrate the correctness of this sentence:
In the figure, the ordinate is the logarithm of the number of transistor pairs 2 in the integrated circuits produced in each period, and the abscissa is the production year. As far as the most familiar multiplication law is concerned, this chart proves its accuracy well. However, what Moore wants to prove with this chart, and what Moore wants to elaborate with his published original text, is far more than the well-known transistor density multiplication law. The real meaning of Moore's law is not that simple.
It turned out that Moore's original intention of publishing that paper was to explore ways to reduce the manufacturing cost of integrated circuits, and predicted that the resulting electronic computers would become cheaper and more popular, which would eventually have a great impact on human life and work style.
The original text says: the most attractive thing about integrated circuits is their low cost. At the same time, with the development of science and technology and the improvement of integration, this advantage will be more obvious. For a simple circuit, the cost of each circuit component is inversely proportional to the number of components contained in the circuit, but at the same time, with the improvement of integration, the complexity of the circuit will also increase, and the manufacturing cost will also increase. After weighing the above two factors, we can get a minimum cost per component. At present, to achieve this lowest cost, the number of components in each circuit is about 50. However, with the reduction of the total cost of the circuit, the number of integrated components in the circuit increases rapidly. In five years, this value will be 1000 components/circuits. To 1970, now the conversion cost of each component will be110. The complexity of minimum component cost will double every year, and this trend will continue, and may even increase faster, at least for 10 years.
So what does Moore mean by "complexity of minimum component cost"? What is the relationship between manufacturing defects, manufacturing costs and integration? Let's rewrite the familiar "transistor multiplication law" according to the author's original intention:
The number of transistors contained in an integrated circuit chip that minimizes the manufacturing cost of each transistor after conversion will double every year.
After such rewriting, Moore's law is closer to Mr. Moore's original intention. However, it is still difficult to accurately express the interactive relationship between the cost reduction of each component and the manufacturing cost of integrated circuits caused by the increase of integration. So in the next article, we will explain in detail, so that everyone can understand the essence of Moore's Law more thoroughly.
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