Posted on 07/14/2022 11:10:15 AM PDT by FarCenter
It’s the diameter of the wafer.
300mm diameter wafer. The wafer can have anywhere from a handful to thousands of chips in it, depending on how big the chips are. After all the buildup processing is done they will cut it up for the individual elements. The wafer fab I worked in crammed up to 40,000 elements on a 150mm wafer.
“Have not checked lately but Moore’s law used to work well.”
Moore’s law is an economic law, not a scientific law. As such, it is very susceptible to Brandonomics - inflation, supply chain issues, demand for increasing function, highly skilled labor shortages... These days with ASML EUV aligners going for $100M the increasing number of aligners that are required in the process and the lead time for these aligners exceeding 12 months due to parts shortages, I don’t expect Moore’s law to hold. I don’t know for sure if GF or STM uses EUV yet, but the same thing holds for the thousands of other semiconductor equipment used to make these chips.
I worked at Ultratech a coon’s age ago. The first steppers sold for about $185K and printed 1.5um. The last one I worked on broke $1 million.
I ‘spect you’re not wrong on several counts. Moore’s Prediction might be a better expression. Found this interesting:
https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/moores-law-evolution
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