Smaller, faster, cheaper. This created giant leaps in performance with each new product, but had a couple of big flaws. One transistor, two transistors, three transistors, four, Five transistors, six transistors, seven transistors, Moore. In my next blog I’ll discuss the implications and recommend some strategies to thrive in the post Moore’s world. He established what is now known as Moore’s law: the observation that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented, published in Electronics Magazine in 1965. A big new program was kicked off that would have a new chip architecture built on a brand-new process node.

And unfortunately, the Tick-Tock model has become broken along with it. This in turn required intricate and expensive packaging and cooling technologies at both the chip and system level.And even allowing for jumping through all sorts of process hoops to maintain the crushing requirements imposed by any exponential law, former Intel CEO Brian Krzanich admitted on Intel’s Q2 2015 earnings call that the Moore’s Law Tick-Tock “cadence today is closer to 2.5 years than two.”But once you become fully convinced and committed to the two-year cadence of new process nodes promised by Moore’s Law, a new model becomes possible.

So with the end of scaling comes the end of Moore’s Law (although I would argue it is the laws of economics at least as much as physics that are contributing to its demise). Jim is a smart guy and I think that was the point he was making.But 3D memory processes, multichip packaging, through-silicon-vias, die-stacking, and new vertical FinFet processes, definitely don’t meet the criteria that Gordon originally stated of no fundamental research needed to replace existing processes. And for a whole bunch of different reasons, it simply won’t be possible anymore to introduce a new manufacturing process every two years. This fundamental business model innovation takes advantage of parallel, rather than serial development.The TICK-TOCK-TICK-TOCK model of chip development simply staggers the process and architecture development by one year.

And now Moore’s Law is Dead … and with it, the Tick-Tock Model.That is five successive architectural TOCK products without a new process TICK.

Way, way back in 1965, when the nearly prehistoric semiconductor industry made integrated circuits using the equivalent of stone knives and bearskins, Fairchild Semiconductor’s R&D Labs Director Gordon Moore wrote and published a very short article. The net is that the power density stays constant so that you get both faster and more devices in the same area and power and it all costs the same.

After all Intel originated the TICK-TOCK model of processor development more than a decade ago, and this cadence became a core part of their business strategy.But all chip companies share the same laws of semiconductor physics, and as we approach the atomic limits of scaling, Moore’s Law has slowed to a crawl for everyone.

He established what is now known as Moore’s law: the observation that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented, published in Electronics Magazine in 1965. If you scale things correctly everything just gets better! ECS has always been a big part of that because it’s the venue through which all of these scientific interactions are orchestrated. So no longer did we get faster processors but instead more and more of them.But other parts of Dennard Scaling have hit a wall too – in particular as vertical tunneling of electrons through gate oxides became significant, constant power density collapsed, and chips consumed more and more power. Kevin holds a BA in Solid State Physics from UC Berkeley. The next year the new chip uses the same process node but introduces a new architecture.The beauty of this chip development model is that it is a business innovation that takes advantage of a classic pipeline that hides latency to achieve throughput.In a nutshell, this is the Tick-Tock model of chip development and it worked extremely well for many, many years. About Gordon E. Moore Gordon E. Moore is the co-founder and chairman of the Intel Corporation. Kevin has contributed to multiple technology standards and has over 25 patents in areas including wireless communications, error correction, security, video compression, and DNA sequencing. But like all pipelines, it’s latency is impacted by the slowest stage – and unfortunately one of the stages has slowed down to a crawl.

Kevin Deierling has served as Mellanox's VP of marketing since March 2013. At some point, these second order effects require fundamental changes in process technology to stay on the Moore’s Law progression.

In fact, my #1 prediction for 2019 was that Moore’s Law would be declared officially dead. One year the new chip is a process shrink of an existing architecture. But before we go any further it’s important to define what we mean by Moore’s Law.