Moore’s Law to take a breather
24th June 2009
“At those nodes, the industry will start getting to the point where semiconductor manufacturing tools are too expensive to depreciate with volume production, i.e., their costs will be so high, that the value of their lifetime productivity can never justify it,” he adds.
At that point, says Jelinek, Moore’s Law becomes academic, and chip makers are going to extend the time they keep their process technologies in the field so they can recoup their substantial investments in process research and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.