moore's law

Can green tech operate under Moore's Law?

BOSTON--Doubling the performance of clean-energy technologies every 18 months, as the semiconductor industry has seen with Moore's Law, is a tough goal to hit. But the same technical and business concepts that underpin Moore's Law can play out in green tech, say executives from General Electric and Intel.

More businesses are seeking to make money around energy technology and environmental sustainability. But the scale and speed of innovation needs to ramp up in order to tackle environmental problems and conserve natural resources, according to a panel at the annual Ceres conference here on Thursday. Ceres is a network … Read more

MIT building self-assembling computer chips

Researchers at MIT are working on getting computer chips to "self assemble" by coaxing molecules to arrange themselves into tiny but useful patterns, a process that could lead to microprocessors with much smaller circuit elements.

In the journal Nature Nanotechnology this week, the researchers describe a process that could become an alternative to conventional photolithography, which relies on light projected onto a photo-sensitive material, as people continue to forecast the demise of Moore's Law. That observation states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years.

Led by … Read more

Flexing the boundaries of flash memory

The University of Tokyo recently announced the development of "organic flash memory," a nonvolatile memory that has the same basic structure as a flash memory and is made with organic materials.

Flash memory is a compact form of storage that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. To date, it's been primarily used in memory cards and USB flash drives, but during the past two years it has made its way to notebook SSD hard drives.

The memory developed at the University of Tokyo is physically flexible and can be used for large-area sensors, electronic paper and other … Read more

Wrapping up Speeds and Feeds, part 2: Reliability

Personal computers have become much more reliable over the last 10 years or so, mostly due to the introduction of advanced operating systems with memory protection and hardware abstraction. The hardware itself has gotten better too; uncorrectable random errors are rare in PCs and extraordinarily rare in server-class systems.

These and other improvements have largely eliminated machine crashes. Blue-screen errors on Windows and kernel panics in Linux and Mac OS X still occur, but much more rarely.

Error-reporting services have become common, helping software developers figure out what went wrong. Most large developers now issue regular patches to fix newly … Read more

The factor factor, part 3

In part 1 and part 2 of this series, I claimed that there is apparently a secret rule in the microprocessor industry that determines the success--or failure--of new chip designs.

The failures included RISC processors, media processors, and intelligent RAM chips, which all sank in spite of clearly demonstrable advantages over alternative solutions. The great success is the programmable graphics processing unit (GPU), which has succeeded in spite of the sometimes wrenching shifts in programming methods and PC system architecture that have been required to support it.

So what's the secret? Simply this: a factor-of-two advantage, even if it'… Read more

Insatiable demand for mobile data challenges industry

Mobile data traffic is doubling every nine months, according to Cisco Systems. By 2013, mobile traffic will hit 2 exabytes--2 million terabytes--per month.

For some vendors, the growth rate is even higher. AT&T says its network load has been growing by 4.5x per year for the last two years, in large part (I assume) because of iPhone sales. You may have read about AT&T's pledge to spend over $12 billion this year to expand its wireless and broadband networks, including new 3G spectrum with better coverage and trials of 4G service.

At the Linley Group's Tech Processor Conference this week in San Jose, Calif., we learned what effect this growth is having on equipment makers, especially the companies making the microprocessors that go into network gear.

According to that same Cisco study, the problem goes well beyond iPhones. A 3G-equipped laptop "can generate as much traffic as 450 basic-feature phones" and 15 times the traffic of an iPhone or BlackBerry.

Networks have also gotten smarter, so network processors have much more work to do. Instead of just hundreds or thousands of clock cycles of work per packet on the network, new functions like firewalls, intrusion detection, and antivirus scanning to keep smartphones and laptops safe can require 100,000 cycles of processing on each packet.

Factoring in the growth in the network itself, Michael Coward of Continuous Computing, a company that sells equipment, software, and services to the telecom market, said that network operators need to achieve a 1,200x boost in processing performance between the systems deployed in 2008 and those that will be needed in 2013.… Read more

Intel Forum preview: Moore's Law expressed as fewer chips

Intel is expressing Moore's Law anew as packing key technologies into fewer chips. New "Clarksfield," "Arrandale" and "Jasper Forest" processors, among others, will showcase this theme later this month at the Intel Developer Forum.

Intel Vice President Steve Smith discussed the highlights of the annual marquee Intel event that will kick off September 22 in San Francisco in a phone interview on Friday.

"Contrary to speculation that Moore's Law is slowing down or potentially dying, we're here to demonstrate that it's alive and well," Smith said. "Integration gives you a smaller, better, faster, more mobile compute platform," he said. Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years.

This theme will be manifested in a number of new processors including the first mobile processor based on Intel's new Nehalem microarchitecture codenamed Clarksfield and even more highly integrated processors to follow dubbed Arrandale and Clarkdale as Intel moves to its next-generation 32-nanometer manufacturing process.

True to its rich heritage of codenames, IDF can, at times, slide into little more than a series of codename-riddled Power Point slides, with some names sounding frustratingly familiar such as Clarksfield and Clarkdale. But codenames, for better or worse, are part and parcel of IDF.

Intel codename decoder:

Clarksfield: 45-nanometer Nehalem mobile processor integrating I/O Clarkdale: 32-nanometer Nehalem desktop chip integrating graphics with CPU Arrandale: 32-nanometer Nehalem mobile chip integrating graphics with CPU Moorestown: 32-nanometer system-on-chip Atom for smartphones Sodaville: 32-nanometer system-on-chip Atom for consumer Pine Trail: new Atom for Netbooks integrating graphics with CPU Jasper Forest: 45-nanometer, first Nehalem embedded chip for uses such as storage hardware Larrabee: Intel discrete graphics chip that will compete with Nvidia, AMD Westmere: 32-nanometer manufacturing process technology

Smith said that Intel's move to the next-generation "Westmere" 32-nanometer manufacturing process will drive even more integration next year. "We have completed development and certification of the 32-nanometer process, which means our factory is fully qualified to run the wafers. And we are actually running Westmere CPU wafers through the factory in support of our Q4 revenue production. Absolutely on track for that Q4 revenue production," he said, referring to commercial production of 32-nanometer processors.

In the more immediate future, Intel will roll out a new mobile processor based on its current 45-nanometer technology. "We just announced Lynnfield (the Core i5 and i7 chips for desktops), Clarksfield is the equivalent product for notebooks," Smith said. "Quad-core, 45-nanometer. Based on Nehalem technology but optimized with power management and integration of the PCI express I/O. Moving from a three-chip solution in the original Nehalem products to two chips--and that is our path going forward." I/O, or input-output, is silicon that enables a processor to talk, and shuttle data, to other parts of the system and peripheral components.

Speaking more specifically about Clarksfield integration, Smith said that "the key elements are integration of memory controller, integration of PCI Express 'gen' 2, power management." Intel will also be talking a lot about a feature called Turbo mode. "Turbo mode is extremely important. If you're not using all the cores, the cores that are not used are powered down. The cores that you are using can run at a faster clock rate with Turbo mode," Smith said.

Smith spoke about the next-generation Atom processor for Netbooks and Nettops, "Pine Trail," too. This chip will also… Read more

Moore's Law limit hit by 2014?

Moore's Law may lapse by 2014, according to iSuppli. The high cost of chip manufacturing--not just the impossibly smaller geometries--may be the biggest threat.

Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. For more than four decades, chip geometries have gotten smaller and smaller, allowing Moore's Law to remain on track.

By 2014, however, the high cost of semiconductor manufacturing equipment will threaten Moore's Law, "altering the fundamental economics of the industry," according to a … Read more

Toasting the birthday of the integrated circuit

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Like any good 50th birthday party, Friday night's soiree included wine, hors d'oeuvres, and a gathering of old friends toasting a half century of fond memories and achievements. But as the event wore on at the Computer History Museum here, it became clear that with a birthday of this magnitude, it was hard to overstate the impact of the integrated circuit not just on the technology industry, but on modern society.

It was in 1959 that the men of Fairchild Semiconductor first created the planar integrated circuit. On Friday, two of the most famous surviving … Read more