Moore’s Law “resurrected from the dead” in the past week, and the related debate has once once more jumped to the stage. In recent years, including Intel (INTC-US), Huida (NVDA-US) and TSMC (2330-TW)(TSM-US) From the positive and negative elaboration and interpretation of Moore’s Law, whether Moore’s Law has come to an end is not a purely technical level, but a struggle for the definition and right to speak of the next-generation development model of the semiconductor industry.
For more than 50 years, the advancement of the semiconductor industry has continued to follow Moore’s Law, but as Moore’s Law has slowed down in the past decade, its effectiveness has often been questioned by the semiconductor industry. The two major semiconductor factories, Intel and Huida, have very different positions.
Huida CEO Huang Renxun has repeatedly stated that Moore’s Law is dead. When he announced the latest GeForce RTX 40 series GPU on the 20th, he bluntly stated that the chip can provide 2 times the performance at a similar cost, or half the cost every year and a half. , the expectation of getting the same performance is a thing of the past, Moore’s Law is dead, and it’s completely gone.
And Intel has always played the role of defender of Moore’s Law. At the Intel Innovation Conference that debuted on the 28th, CEO Kissinger returned to Huida in the air, emphasizing that “Moore’s Law will not die, but will live well”, which will remain valid for at least the next ten years, and will tap the element cycle. The infinite possibilities of the watch continue to play the role of the guardian of Moore’s Law.
Kissinger pointed out that Intel combined transistor technology breakthrough RibbonFET, energy transfer technology breakthrough PowerVia two technologies, coupled with High-NA lithography process, and advanced packaging technology development, hope that a chip package can be the current 100 billion transistor density 10x increase to 1 trillion transistors by 2030.
When Zhang Zhongmou, the founder of TSMC, was asked in 2019 whether Moore’s Law was coming to an end, he cleverly described the next development of Moore’s Law as “there is no way out, and there is nowhere.” But before that, he thought that Moore’s Law would come to an end in 2018. Zhang Zhongmou predicted the reason for the U-turn, which can be seen from the opinions expressed by TSMC Chairman Liu Deyin and President Wei Zhejia in the past year.
Liu Deyin said in December last year that the development of semiconductor technology in the past 50 years has been like walking in a tunnel, following Moore’s Law and having a clear path. Now that it is near the exit of the tunnel, technological development inside the tunnel is becoming more and more difficult, but there are more possibilities outside the tunnel. No longer limited by tunnels. He believes that in order to achieve the goals of high computing power and high energy-saving efficiency, more advanced process technology and 3D IC advanced packaging technology are the two keys, which must go hand in hand.
Wei Zhejia also mentioned in sharing the three major changes in semiconductors at the TSMC Technology Forum in August this year that the increase in transistor density alone is not enough to meet the needs of performance upgrades, and 3D IC technology is needed to improve system performance.
Judging from the conversations of Liu Deyin and Wei Zhejia, the shrinking of 2D chip line width is no longer enough to support the demand for process advancement. Advanced packaging technologies such as 3D IC will play a key role in the “life extension” of Moore’s Law. The order of the semiconductor industry shaped by Moore’s Law will be rewritten with a new model. In the process of reshaping, what semiconductor factories are arguing regarding is not just technology, but the right to define the new industrial order.