April 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of one of the business world’s most profound drivers, now commonly referred to as Moore’s Law. In April 1965, Gordon Moore, later co-founder of Intel, observed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits would continue to double every year. This observation has set the exponential tempo for five decades of innovation and investment resulting in todays $336 billion USD integrated circuits industry enabled by the $82 billion USD semiconductor equipment and materials industry (SEMI and SIA 2014 annual totals).
SEMI, the global industry association serving the nano- and micro-electronic manufacturing supply chains, today recognizes the enabling contributions made by the over 1,900 SEMI Member companies in developing semiconductor equipment and materials that produce over 219 billion integrated circuit devices and 766 billion semiconductor units per year (WSTS, 2014).
50 years of Moore’s Law has led to one of the most technically sophisticated, constantly evolving manufacturing industries operating today. Every day, integrated circuit (IC) production now does what was unthinkable 50 years ago. SEMI Member companies now routinely produce materials such as process gases, for example, to levels of 99.994 percent quality for bulk Silane (SiH4) in compliance with the SEMI C3.55 Standard. Semiconductor equipment manufacturers develop the hundreds of processing machines necessary for each IC factory (fab) that are at work all day, every day, processing more than 100 silicon wafers per hour with fully automated delivery and control all with standardized interoperability. SEMI Member companies provide the equipment to inspect wafer process results automatically, and find and identify defects at sizes only fractions of the 14nm circuit line elements in todays chips, ensuring process integrity throughout the manufacturing process.
”It was SEMI Member companies who enabled Moore’s Law’s incredible exponential growth over the last 50 years,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI. ”Whereas hundreds of transistors on an IC was noteworthy in the 1960s, today over 1.3 billion transistors are on a single IC. SEMI Member companies provide the capital equipment and materials for todays mega-fabs, with each one processing hundreds or thousands of ICs on each wafer with more than 100,000 wafers processed per month.”
To celebrate SEMI Member companies contribution to the 50 years of Moores Law, SEMI has produced a series of Infographics that show the progression of the industry.
|
1971 |
2015 |
|
|
Price per chip |
$351 |
$393 |
|
Price per 1,000 transistors |
$150 |
$0.0003 |
|
Number of transistors per chip |
2,300 |
1,300,000,000 |
|
Minimum feature size on chip |
10,000nm |
14nm |
From SEMI infographic Why Moore Matters: www.semi.org/node/55026
The years prior to SEMI would be interesting to add to the comparisons.
Early 60’s very few fab process tool vendors that survived the 55 or even 50 years to today.
And early wafer size options from 1960 to today would be nice to see, including the overlaps in size as DRAM’s et al pioneered, and most analog and power IC’s lagged more and more behind as shrinks became less important than precision control and reliability.
The years prior to SEMI would be interesting to add to the comparisons.
Early 60′s very few fab process tool vendors that survived the 55 or even 50 years to today.
And early wafer size options from 1960 to today would be nice to see, including the overlaps in size as DRAM’s et al pioneered, and most analog and power IC’s lagged more and more behind as shrinks became less important than precision control and reliability.
Like the scientists of those days saying atom is the minute particle that cannot be divided any further, what is the cut off at present for the 1.3 B transistors mounted on a chip in many a hundred layers?! In this ever expanding macro and nano combined technology, one is bewildered of the outcomes that emerge almost daily, well proving the Moore’s Law.