Semiconductor scaling
Why do we scale IC technology?
- Cost ~ $300 million to build a new fab line
- Plus untold research/development dollars
1998: 0.25?m feature sizes, 10-million transistors per chip
- Why not use 0.25?m for next-generation processor
- Use 3 chips rather than one???
- Yield ?
- Easier to test
- Less I/O from each chip ? easier packaging