Moore's Law vs. Cost of Transistor Dilemma

Dr. Gordon Moore in this year's ISSCC keynote address admitted: “No exponential is forever.” We ask, therefore, not whether or not Moore’s Law will loose its validity but when this is going to happen? In this presentation we will analyze key enabler of the Moore's Law success: the exponentially decreasing cost of an “average transistor”. Discussion will be guided by the question: What can be done to stay on Moore's exponential curves a little bit longer? Close collaboration between design, test and manufacturing will be indicated as a unique opportunity for extending Moor’s Law for the next couple of years.
Wojciech Maly received the M.Sc. degree in electronic engineering from the Technical University of Warsaw, Poland, in 1970, and the Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Applied Cybernetics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, in 1975. Since September 1983, he has been with Carnegie Mellon University, where he is a Whitaker Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Dr. Maly’s research interests have been focused on the interfaces between VLSI design, testing and manufacturing with the stress on the stochastic nature of phenomena relating these three VLSI domains.

Dr. Maly was elected an IEEE Fellow in 1990 and has been recipient or co-recipient of various awards including Carnegie Mellon’s Benjamin Richard Teare Teaching Award, AT&T Foundation Award for Excellence in Instructing of Engineering Students, SRC 1992 Technical Excellence Award, Best Paper Award from the International Test Conference in 1990 and in 1997, the Best Paper Award from ESREF 94 , the 1994 Best Paper Award from IEEE Transaction on Semiconductor Manufacturing, 1995 Best Paper Award from 1996 European Design and Test Conference and the Eta Kappa Nu CMU Sigma Chapter Excellence in Teaching Award.