.25 products shipping 1 year ahead of schedule:
SIA Issues Semiconductor Tech Road Map
(12/09/97; 11:00 a.m. EST)
By Patrick Waurzyniak, Electronic Buyers' News
The pace of technical change in the semiconductor industry
is accelerating at a much more rapid rate than just three years
ago, according to the latest technology road map issued on
Monday by the Semiconductor Industry Association.
Since the SIA's previous technology road map issued in 1994,
three-year production cycles have been cut to two years by
leading-edge semiconductor manufacturers, as innovations in
chip technologies continue shrinking feature sizes while
doubling the power in new chip generations, the SIA report
concluded.
"The road map is the definitive guideline for technological
growth through the year 2012," said SIA president George
Scalise. "It identifies our research needs as well as our goals
for maintaining the strength of the semiconductor industry
over the next 15 years."
The shift toward products built with 0.25-micron technology,
for example, has occurred faster than projections, with
products based on the technology shipping this year, one
year ahead of earlier estimates, the SIA report said.
While today's most powerful high-end microprocessor chips
run at speeds of 750 MHz and contain nearly 4 million
transistors, the SIA road map forecasts that in 2003, the most
powerful microprocessors will hit 1,500 MHz and contain 18
million transistors. During that same time frame, the capacity
of the industry's most powerful DRAMs will grow from 256
megabits this year to 4 gigabits in 2003.
"The history of the chip industry is a series of amazing
innovations and technological discoveries that have enabled
it to keep on track with Moore's Law," said Jim Glaze, SIA's
vice president of technology programs.
According to Moore's Law, chip performance and power
doubles every 18 months at no additional cost to customers.
The SIA forecasts that current technologies will enable the
industry to keep shrinking chips and making them more
powerful until about 2003, when feature sizes should be 0.13
micron.
"Beyond that, as we approach feature sizes of 0.10 micron, we
need to develop new technologies to maintain the
unprecedented growth of the semiconductor industry and its
contributions to the U.S. economy," Glaze said. "Based on
our history, I'm confident we'll meet these challenges."
The SIA technology road map identifies the major challenges
that industry technologists must address during the next 15
years, while not specifying the most likely solutions or costs
for meeting these challenges. The SIA's road map is the
collaborative work of more than 300 scientists from industry,
government, and universities, culminating an 18-month-long
process of workshops aimed at forging a consensus on
industry R&D issues and long-range planning needs. Copies
of the SIA study, which are priced at $250 each, are being
distributed by Sematech in Austin, Texas. The report also is
available online through Sematech's home page. |
