Intel's Gordon Moore believes that chip design will eventually hit fundamental limits

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IDF: Moore gives his law 10-15 years

Physics will catch up with semiconductor shrinkage, says Intel co-founder

Tom Sanders at Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, vnunet.com 20 Sep 2007

Chip researchers will hit fundamental physical limits in the next 10 to 15 years that will prevent them from further shrinking chip sizes, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted at the Intel Developer Forum.

Moore is best known for a theory published in 1965, predicting that transistor sizes will decrease by 50 per cent every 18 to 24 months.

As a result, chip speeds will double or prices will be cut in half. The theory has become known as Moore's Law.

"In another decade, decade and half, we will hit something that is fundamental," Moore said when asked if there would be an end to his 'law'.

But he also pointed out that there have always been fundamental barriers that prevent chip technologies from further advancing.

"There really are some fundamental limits, but it has been amazing to me how the technologies have been able to keep pushing those out," he said.

"As long as I can remember, the fundamental limits are two, three generations out. So far we have been able to get around them."

Intel has been pushing the development of 45nm processors, for example. Current 65nm chips use gate materials that are only five molecules thick. Any further decrease would have caused a drastic increase in power leakage.

But the chip giant started to use hafnium to build smaller, more efficient transistors.

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