Better Engineering Design Compensates for Moore’s Law

In 1965, Gordon Moore, a co-founder at Intel had predicted that the number of transistors per square inch, would double every two years. That law has prevailed till now but it is showing signs of slowing down.

So embedded engineers who want to develop products for emerging technologies like the Internet of Things have to get innovative. Cisco has predicted that the Internet of Things may eventually get 40 billion smart objects on the internet with 10 billion more traditional devices. This means, we will need a large supply of low cost embedded chips that are also capable of communication. The good news is, growth and innovation can continue to grow, but there is a need to go slow on the relentless drive to get more transistors on a chip.

There is no doubt that chips will go on shrinking. Companies are trying to develop chips of 10 nm. That may be possible, but beyond that we will have to develop new technologies, manufacturing processes and materials. One of the first things that companies have to do now is improve their design engineering processes. A start has already been made with technologies such as 3D chip stacking, 450 mm wafers, new semiconductor material and EUV technology (extreme ultraviolet lithography).