TSMC says Moore’s Law has become ‘irrelevant’

As the semiconductor industry evolves, TSMC has pointed out that Moore’s Law has become “irrelevant” by today’s standards and that they are no longer limited to what has been set to advance their chips.

In case you’re not familiar, Moore’s Law states that a continuous “node reduction” model over generations is the only way to achieve performance leaps. This is basically what we’ve seen for some time now, with 5nm in the spotlight recently, with new technologies focused on 3nm today, and with 2nm already in production in factories.

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But TSMC has found “effective” deviations that yield sustainable and superior results – making what Gordon Moore defined in the past indifferent to what they are achieving now. At least according to Dr. Kevin Zhang, the manufacturer’s senior vice president and co-chief operating officer.

The executive claims that they have challenged the “morals” surrounding the semiconductor industry and that, with the flow of artificial intelligence, the scale of computing power has grown massively – thanks to the techniques and improvements they have made to their products.

Well, my simple answer is that I don’t care. As long as we continue to push the envelope on higher technology scales, I don’t care if Moore’s Law is alive or dead.

In reality, many of us see Moore’s Law as based on two-dimensional scaling – which is no longer the case. As you can see from the innovation hype in our industry, we continue to find new ways to pack more functions and more capabilities into smaller and smaller form factors.

We will continue to achieve higher levels of performance and higher levels of energy efficiency. So from that perspective, I believe that Moore’s Law, or the scaling of technology, will continue. We will continue to innovate and move the industry forward.

Kevin Zhang

TSMC does not rely on Moore’s Law

Zhang’s statement points out that TSMC is seeing how Moore’s Law is getting less and less traction in the industry today. Given that the company, Intel and Samsung are all determined to “tighten the functionality” in their processes, this is a massive contributor to the massive increase in capacity.

An example of this is that the 3nm process, compared to the 5nm process produced by TSMC, had a 30% improvement in energy efficiency – which is a huge advance.

In addition, he also revealed that TSMC is further increasing its CoWoS production lines – reaching 60% and with room to grow further. He points out that this will be essential for artificial intelligence accelerators and that the future will have exciting news with constant innovations in this segment.

Fonte: WCCFTECH