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CMOS has 10 years left, says scientist
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23/10/2008
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According to Dr Dennis Buss, pictured, chief scientist with Texas Instruments, classic cmos has just four nodes left before it hits a physical wall.
Giving the opening keynote address at this year’s Sophia Antipolis Microelectronics Forum, Dr Buss revealed his latest thinking on Moore’s law, chip feature sizes and timing. He estimates that 10nm feature sizes will be the limit, and that it will be reached around 2020.
Dr Buss also warned that getting to 10nm will be like walking through a marsh – slow and uncomfortably difficult. He also reckons that whatever is going to replace standard cmos hasn’t been invented, discovered or developed yet. Even though this unspecified technology won’t take over until at least 2030, he believed the delay wouldn’t be a problem. “The landscape is changing. We don’t need those higher levels of integration.”
Emerging applications driving the industry are medical, security and transport. “The trend will be for low power, energy scavenging, integrated mixed technology microsystems,” he said. Devices incorporating rf, analogue, MEMS and NEMS (nano scale MEMS) will be in demand to differentiate products in a competitive environment, he concluded.
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Author
Louise Joselyn
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