Name: Intel shows how it'll keep Moore's Law ticking so your 2025 laptop won't suck
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Intel shows how it'll keep Moore's Law ticking so your 2025 laptop won't suck

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FollowMaybe your 2025 laptop won't suck.Stephen ShanklandPrincipal writierStephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and writes about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and other new technology. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.4 min read, the observation that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every , has taken a beating as progress miniaturizing circuitry falters. But chip giant Intel has plotted a course to keep the idea alive with a plan to pack 50 times as many transistors onto processors than is possible today.The progress of Moore's Law, named after , has spread chips from expensive mainframes in the 1960s to personal computers in the 1980s and now to smartphones, watches, cars, TVs, washing machines and just about anything with electrical power.Moore's Law has worked by shrinking transistors, the data-processing elements on a chip. Intel plans to keep shrinking them, but also to increase density by stacking chips into multilayer packages."We firmly believe there is a lot more transistor density to come," , in a speech Monday for the for cutting-edge processor revelations. "The vision will play out over time -- maybe a decade or more -- but it will play out."Koduri's optimism mirrored the excitement of many other companies at Hot Chips, an engineering conference where researchers detail progress. AMD, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, IBM and a gaggle of startups showed ways they're advancing both general-purpose chips and those dedicated to tasks such as artificial intelligence, graphics and networking.Koduri described several steps to cram more transistors into a chip than possible with 10nm chips like its Tiger Lake processor arriving in laptops this fall. First will come the most traditional approach, shrinking transistors and squeezing them closer together. That'll triple the transistor density, Koduri predicted.Next up are new transistor designs that continue the current transformation of transistors from flat circuitry elements into 3D structures. These steps, called nanowires and stacked nanowires, should quadruple density.Then come packaging innovations, with chips stacked into a layer cake of processor elements. That should quadruple density again. The total math brings density up by about a factor of 50.Intel's optimism contrasts with difficult times keeping Moore's Law ticking.Intel, once the unquestioned leader in chip manufacturing, has struggled in recent years. Its move from a manufacturing process with transistor features measuring 14 nanometers to later 10nm took five years instead of two. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, and with circuitry elements 14nm wide, Intel can pack about 7,000 across the width of a human hair.Next, by six months, and . To help adjust, Intel has adopted a more flexible design process that lets it rely more on other chipmakers like its top rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. and makes Apple's iPhone chips, last year declared "." But unlike in the past, Moore's Law steps now impose new costs for companies that want to employ the most advanced manufacturing processes.Microsoft's Xbox One in 2013, Xbox One X in 2017, and Xbox Series X coming this year all have chips about the same size, which in the past would have meant that the chips cost about the same price. Now, though, "it's significantly more expensive for the newest one," said Microsoft chip designer Jeff Andrews.Another challenge besides cost is that new chips often only accelerate specific computing operations. That's useful for tasks like artificial intelligence and graphics, but it makes life harder for software programmers who have to reckon with processors that work in different ways.Intel is trying to bridge this chip divide with a new software layer it calls . It's a notable move: Intel is a hardware specialist, but it's embracing software as an essential step in making its chips useful."Increasingly, hardware architecture teams need to be comprised of software experts," Koduri said.At Hot Chips, processor makers also detailed a host of innovations. Among the biggest:Get the CNET Daily News newsletterSpice up your small talk with the latest tech news, products and reviews. Delivered on weekdays.

FollowMaybe your 2025 laptop won't suck.Stephen ShanklandPrincipal writierStephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and writes about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and other new technology. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.4 min read, the observation that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every , has taken a beating as progress miniaturizing circuitry falters. But chip giant Intel has plotted...

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Stephen Shankland

CNET, formerly Computer Network, is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. Founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition in 2008.

Intel shows how it'll keep Moore's Law ticking so your 2025 laptop won't suck

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