Moore's Law hits economic limits

In accordance with what we now know as Moore's Law, we have moved from pieces of silicon with 16 transistors on them in the 1960s to ones with 600 million today. More than 1 million could fit on the full stop at the end of this sentence. Globalfoundries' "Fab 2" in New York will achieve another level of miniaturisation when it begins volume production in 2012, making chips with circuitry just 28 billionths of a metre wide. But its construction is a rarity because of another aspect of Moore's Law. We have yet to reach a scientific limit to further miniaturisation, but an economic one is fast approaching, according to some experts. "The high cost of semiconductor manufacturing equipment is making continued chipmaking advancements too expensive to use for volume production, relegating Moore's Law to the laboratory and altering the fundamental economics of the industry," wrote Len Jelinek, chief analyst for semiconductor manufacturing at the iSuppli research firm, last month.