AMD Thinks Moore’s Law Still Has Six to Eight Years Left

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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang declared in September that Moore’s Law is dead, but AMD doesn’t seem to agree, with CTO Mark Papermaster suggesting in a new interview about how the observation that implies transistors in integrated circuits double about every two years still has some life left.

“Innovation always finds its way around barriers,” Papermaster told Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers at the financial outfit’s TMT Summit. “I can see exciting new transistor technology for the next – as far as you can really plot these things out – about six to eight years, and it’s very, very clear to me the advances that we’re going to make to keep improving the transistor technology, but they’re more expensive.”

Papermaster goes on to tease such innovations in transistor technology, with one of the more recent ones being AMD’s Infinity architecture, which enabled the modular approach of the chiplet architecture that sees a chip built from multiple dies, as noted in coverage from The Register.

“Chiplets is really a way to just rethink about how the semiconductor industry is going forward,” Papermaster said.

This “will keep innovation going and we’ll keep, I’ll say, a Moore’s Law equivalent, meaning that you continue to really double that capability every 18 to 24 months, [this] is the innovation around how the solution is put together,” he added.

“Moore’s Law is dead,” NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told PC World’s Gordon Ung in September. “A 12-inch wafer is a lot more expensive today. The idea that the chip is going to go down in price is a story of the past.”

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger stated that Moore’s Law is “alive and well” at a company launch event that same month.

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Tsing Mui
News poster at The FPS Review.

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