It’s time to throw out the old Moore’s Law metric
"Picking something that is agreed upon, even if imperfect, is more useful than the current node branding.” —Michael Mayberry, Intel CTOOne is that the continuing focus on “nodes” obscures the fact that there are actually achievable ways semiconductor technology will continue to drive computing forward even after there is no more squeezing to be accomplished with CMOS transistor geometry. Another is that the continuing node-centric view of semiconductor progress fails to point the way forward in the industry-galvanizing way that it used to. And, finally, it just rankles that so much stock is put into a number that is so fundamentally meaningless
An alternative the node metric, called LMC, captures a technology’s value by stating the density of logic (DL), the density of main memory (DM), and the density of the interconnects linking them (DC). In the LMC metric, DL is the density of logic transistors, in number of devices per square millimeter. DM is the density of a system’s main memory in memory cells per square millimeter. And DC is the connections between logic and main memory, in interconnects per square millimeter. If there are multiple tiers of devices or a 3D stack of chips, the entire volume above that square millimeter counts.
A Better Way to Measure Progress in Semiconductors
It’s time to throw out the old Moore’s Law metric
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