Moore’s Law has come to an end?

Looking at Moore’s Law in 2022, the problem is that the size of transistors is now so small that we can’t do more to make them smaller.

A silicon atom is 0.2 nanometers wide, which makes a gate length of 2 nanometers about 10 silicon atoms. At these scales, it becomes increasingly difficult to control the flow of electrons as various quantum effects play out within the transistor itself. For larger transistors, crystal deformation on the atomic scale doesn’t affect the overall flow of current, but when you only have about 10 atomic distances to work with, any changes in the underlying atomic structure can affect the flow of current through the transistor. Ultimately, transistors are getting close to the point where we can make them as small as possible and still work. The last iteration of the way we’ve been building and improving silicon chips is coming.

Moore’s Law has another potential pitfall, and that is simple economics. The cost of shrinking transistors isn’t coming down as it was in the 1960s. At best, it declined slightly from generation to generation, but diseconomies of scale began to affect manufacturing. When demand for semiconductor chips first took off, the engineering capacity to produce chips was expensive, but at least available. As demand skyrockets from smartphones to satellites to the Internet of Things, there isn’t enough capacity to meet that demand, which has driven prices up at every step of the supply chain.

What’s more, when the number of transistors doubles, so does the amount of heat they generate. For many businesses, the largest buyers of the most advanced processing chips, the cost of cooling large server rooms is becoming increasingly unaffordable. As companies try to save money by extending the life and performance of their existing equipment, chipmakers responsible for implementing Moore’s Law bring in less revenue for R&D — and R&D itself becomes more expensive.

Without additional gains, it will be harder to overcome all the physical barriers to further shrinking transistors. So even if physical challenges don’t end Moore’s Law, the lack of demand for smaller transistors will almost certainly end.

Or, we can expect the end of Moore’s Law with excitement and anticipation. After all, adversity is the mother of invention. For the past 70 years, we’ve been trying to figure out how to shrink transistors more and more, and now that road of innovation has come to an end.

This is definitely not the only way forward, if we stop focusing all our efforts on shrinking transistors, we can focus on other areas and discover new breakthroughs where the invention of the transistor might seem mediocre by comparison. We won’t know until these new avenues of innovation are explored, and the end of Moore’s Law may be the signal we need that it’s time to start looking for new engines of progress.

At the end of the day, Moore’s Law was not a “law” from the start, but more of a self-fulfilling wish. We expect transistor densities to double every year, and then every two years, so we look for how to accomplish that.

Whatever comes next, whether it’s quantum computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence, or even something we don’t even have a name for, we’ll find a new desire to drive this innovation forward.

At the end of the day, our fascination with Moore’s Law has never been the density of transistors. Most people who have heard of Moore’s Law can’t even begin to explain what transistor density means, let alone how interlocking transistors form logic circuits or how a smartphone in your pocket works (or even a pocket calculator in the 1970s). For most of us, Moore’s Law has always been about our expectations for progress, and it’s largely up to us.

Moore’s Law may have come to an end, but if we want it badly, we’ll find a new one.

Cheersonic is the leading developer and manufacturer of ultrasonic coating systems for applying precise, thin film coatings to protect, strengthen or smooth surfaces on parts and components for the microelectronics/electronics, alternative energy, medical and industrial markets, including specialized glass applications in construction and automotive.