Deep Submicron USLI Design Paradigm: Who is Writing the Future?

Abstract

The concept of "technology generation" attributed to Gordon Moore has created a plausible method for predicting the behavior of technology road map that has seen world's production of silicon CMOS to exceed 75% of electronic related materials. A feature of such progress is characterized by the complexity factor that predicts the emergence of a new generation of technology every three years.A reasonable method of comparison would be to observe the parallel between CMOS based systems with those of biologically inspired systems. Deep submicron, synonymous with Ultra Large Scale of integration, suggests that by the year 2010 the number of transistors/chip will be in the order of 0.5x10 9 , with an intrinsic clock speed of 3GHz. At this level of integration the classic MOS transistor would have only a few ?electrons' in the channel to direct. Thus, the reality of Quantum MOS (QMOS) transistor becomes a plausible possibility.In the mean time the question remains as to how are we going to cope with the design and quality of the new system complexity. ULSI design requires a shift in the design paradigm from current evolutionary thinking for system integration, to more of revolutionary approaches as depicted by attributes of if brain architecture.