Expectations for Future Microand Nanotechnologies - Implications of Emerging Micro-and Nanotechnologies - page 14

TABLE 2-1 Predictions of 2001 ITRS for Selected Parameters

Year of Production

Characteristic 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016

Memory
DRAM feature size, 1 ⁄ 2 pitch (nm) 130 90 65 45 32 22

Generation at production 512M 1G 4G 8G 32G 64G

Cost/bit at production (packaged 7.7 2.7 0.96 0.34 0.12 0.042

microcents)

Logic
Minimum feature size (physical 65 37 25 18 13 9

gate length) (nm)
Functions/chip (millions of 276 553 1,106 2,212 4,424 8,848

transistors)
Cost/transistor, high performance, 97 34 12 4.3 1.5 0.54

at production (microcents)
Local clock (MHz) 1,684 3,990 6,739 11,511 19,348 28,751

Power dissipation, high 130 160 190 218 251 288

performance (W)

SOURCE: Adapted from the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, 2001 edition.
Austin, Tex.: International SEMATECH.

carriers becomes significant at 10 nanometers and dominates below 3 nanom-
eters. In addition, at a few nanometers, about 50 percent of all atoms in a particle
are surface atoms, so that electrical properties are no longer determined by solid-
state bulk phenomena.
On the other hand, the same nanoscale phenomena offer the opportunity to
develop whole new classes of devices based on the principles of quantum phys-
ics, which may propel integrated circuits toward and beyond the end of the
current roadmap. FlashRAM, now widely used to store data in digital cameras
and MP3 music players, uses quantum-mechanical tunneling of electrons through
~10-nanometer-thick dielectric layers to charge a memory storage element. The
ITRS (2001) and the European Commission Technology Roadmap for Nano-
electronics (2000) 3 discuss a number of candidates for replacing classical CMOS.
However, it may be that systems based on these new principles function in a
manner significantly different from current computing systems and are more
suited to alternative architectures. There is no established roadmap to the devel-
opment of these technologies, even though one may speculate on their function-
ality. A possible path is illustrated in Figure 2-3.