New report examines challenges of CMOS extension and beyond

摘要

The post-CMOS world of device manufacturing holds great promise and poses many challenges. A nanoscale world that boasts spin logic, quantum cellular automata, and molecular devices presents the semiconductor industry with formidable long-term obstacles. A new joint report by the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) and the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) details the nature and extent of those hurdles. Published in August, Silicon Nanoelectronics and Beyond: Challenges and Research Directions notes that the semiconductor industry "faces the twin challenges of extending charge-based electronics to its ultimate limits while simultaneously inventing new information-processing technologies that can support continued exponential improvements in performance and cost." This capability must extend, the authors point out, for several decades "beyond the end of scaling projected by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors."