Since its inception, the semiconductor industry has used a physical dimension (the minimum gate length of a transistor) as a means to gauge continuous technology advancement. This metric is all but obsolete today. As a replacement, we propose a density metric, which aims to capture how advances in semiconductor device technologies enable system-level benefits. The proposed metric can be used to gauge advances in future generations of semi-conductor technologies in a holistic way, by accounting for the progress in logic, memory, and packaging/integration technologies simultaneously.

This month’s issue offers insight into efficient compression and execution of DNNs, the challenge of connecting rural areas, and the clique problem in wireless communication. which

The integrated circuit (IC) industry has followed a steady path of shrinking device geometries for more than 30 years. It is widely believed that this process will continue for at least another ten years. However there are increasingly difficult materials and technology problems to be solved over the next decade if this is to actually occur, and beyond ten years there is great uncertainty about the ability to continue scaling metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) structures. This paper describes some of the the most challenging materials and process issues to be faced in the future and where possible solutions are known, describes these potential solutions. The paper is written with the underlying assumption that the basic metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) transistor will remain the dominant switching device used in ICs and it further assumes that silicon will remain the dominant substrate material.