Lithography and the future of Moore's law

Abstract

The definition of"Moore's Law" has come to refer to almost anything related to the semiconductor industry that when plotted on semi-log paper approximates a straight line. I hesitate to review it's origins and by doing so restrict it's definition. However, today I will review the history and past performance relative to predictions and show where the advances have come from. I will leave the future performance up to you. Certainly continuing on the same slope doesn't get any easier. It presents a difficult challenge to the industry. The original paper that postulated the first version of the "law" was an article I wrote for the 3 5th anniversary issue of Electronics Magazine in 1 965 . My assignment was to predict what was going to happen in the semiconductor components industry over the next ten years -- to 1975 . In 1965 the integrated circuit was only a few years old and in many cases was not very well accepted. There was still a large contingent in the user community who wanted to design their own circuits and who considered the job of the semiconductor industry to be to supply them with transistors and diodes so they could get on with their jobs. I was trying to emphasize the fact that integrated circuits really did have an important role to play.