Silicon technology directions in the new millennium

Abstract

Silicon technology development is at a crossroad, in spite of its exponential rate of progress for more than thirty years. It is now clear that traditional CMOS devices are fast approaching both performance saturation and density saturation. Nonetheless, CMOS will remain the digital logic technology platform for future evolution of silicon technology in application-specific directions. Besides optimizing CMOS scaling further for speed and density, there will be additional emphases placed upon low power dissipation, on programmability, RF and analog functions, and on the chip-scale integration of these functions with digital CMOS. The technical challenges are formidable, but the application opportunities enabled by these developments will provide the incentive for driving the development of silicon technology forward.