Through the last decade of the past century and the 1st decade of our present century, Moore's law, the observation that was made some 20 years prior, was convincingly validated year after year. From a technology perspective this evolution was largely achieved through incremental improvements in a well established technology/device architecture and materials system. While the engineering achievements required to deliver each new technology node were formidable, the excitement with the advances in technology has shifted away from the core silicon technology and more to that applications that the silicon technology enabled. As we entered the 2nd decade of the present century the engineering community encountered the often predicted physical limitations of the established materials system. Existing materials systems and technology architectures that had been the base for more than two decades no longer scale. Adding to the challenge, the roadmap forward cannot be achieved through a single reset to a new base architecture/materials system but requires significant innovation at each new technology node. The time between innovations in research, development, design solutions, and finally manufacturing must be compressed making it once again an exciting time to be involved with silicon technology development. Additionally the economics of this paradigm shift in the technology roadmap are driving changes in the adoption profile. Innovations in “More than Moore” will be required to enable scaling solutions for both power and bandwidth. This introduction will examine the complex trade-offs required to optimize the technology architecture to enable the roadmap.
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