Intel is welcoming the year of knowing the world. For it, this is an important milestone. Compared with other companies, Intel is synonymous with chips. People who know Intel should know Moore's Law - the past half Since the turn of the century, it has been driving Intel to move forward.
Moore's Law - from the hands of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore - means that the number of transistors integrated in the chip will double every two years. But in Moore's original paper published in the journal Electronics. His prediction is that the number of transistors integrated in the chip will double every year between 1965 and 1975. Later in the revised paper published in 1985, Moore doubled the number of transistors. Changed to 2 years.
Whether it is intentional or not, Moore's Law and the pace of its development of chips have always been a core part of Intel itself. The pace of development of Intel – in fact, the computing industry – has always been determined by it. In recent years, Intel Established the tick-tock chip release strategy, released a smaller architecture size (increase in the number of integrated transistors) a year, and released the same improved version of the chip every other year.
Unfortunately, Moore's Law is not working so well: transistor size is quite small (Intel is currently developing a 10 nanometer manufacturing process - an atomic size), and the laws of physics have begun to hinder the development of chips. The size of the transistor is not completely impossible, but the speed of further reducing the transistor size (the number of transistors will increase accordingly) will be greatly slowed down, and the cost will be higher and higher.
The development speed of the chip has begun to slow down. In 2015, the then Intel CEO's Ke Zaiqi said, 'The last two technical upgrades have shown that our rhythm is close to two and a half years instead of two years.' Intel's 10 nanometer process has Multiple jumps, it is currently expected that the 10 nanometer process chip release time is 2019, which indicates that the technology upgrade interval will exceed 3 years.
Intel has released a generation of 14nm+ chips (Kaby Lake R) and a generation of 14nm++ (Coffee Lake) chips, all based on the previous generation architecture, dedicated to increasing battery life and increasing the number of integrated cores instead of adding transistors. Quantity. Although the industry has proposed a variety of solutions to this problem - including innovative new transistors, the use of new materials, and even considering the new computer working principle, it will eventually hit the wall.
Whether you like it or not, Intel is changing. Intel missed a new wave of computing represented by the rise of smartphones, and has to face the situation that Qualcomm Xiaolong series chips dominate the mobile phone field. There is almost nothing in the field of smart phones. gain a foothold.
In addition, in the next few years, the specter of Spectre and Meltdown will continue to linger. AMD and Qualcomm and other rivals are making a comeback, trying to challenge Intel's hegemony in the desktop and server areas. There are even rumors that Apple may be considering developing its own computer. Chip. After the class is not normal and the relationship is not normal, Intel also needs to hire a new CEO who can continue to open.
One might think that when Intel needed it the most, Moore's Law fell out of the chain. However, this may not necessarily be a bad thing. The slower pace makes Intel have more time to optimize the existing architecture, and AMD, which has recently returned. The company will have more time to catch up and drive market competition. Ultimately, this will benefit everyone.
But this means that Intel must change and move forward in the future, rather than relying on continuous iteration cycles. This is already on the Intel eighth-generation Core chip, quad-core and six-core processors become desktops. Standard with notebooks: With parallel multi-core processing technology, the potential of the existing technology and the number of transistors can be fully exploited instead of blindly improving the original processing power.
Earlier this year, the unprecedented Intel-AMD collaboration gave birth to a CPU-GPU hybrid chip that combines Intel Core processors with AMD Radeon graphics chips. Intel takes advantage of existing processor technology in a new way to deliver higher Performance and extended laptop battery life without the need to 'dead' with Moore's Law and Molecular Physics.
It may not be current, or even in the next 10 years, but Moore's Law will expire sooner or later. The next step of technology - or Intel's technology for the next 50 years (no longer relying on Moore's Law) may change the computing field again.
