Billion transistor chips in mainstream enterprise platforms of the future

Abstract

Today’s leading edge microprocessors like the Intel’s Itanium ® 2 Processor feature over 220 million transistors in 0.18µm semiconductor process technology. Nanotechnology that continues to drive Moore’s Law provides a doubling of the transistor density every two years. This indicates that a Billion transistor chip is possible in the 65 nm technology within the next 3 to 4 years. Such chips can be used in mainstream enterprise server platforms. This talk will review the progress in semiconductor technology over the last 3 decades since the introduction of the first microprocessor in 1971. A short video tape will provide a historical perspective on Moore’s Law in the form of an interview with co-founder Gordon Moore, and his thoughts for the future of semiconductor technology. Key trends in high end microprocessor design including multi-threading and multi-core will be covered. We have started to see “SMP-on-a-chip” designs for high-end enterprise servers where two processors with Level 2 (L2) cache are incorporated on a single chip. Future microprocessors will offer higher levels of multiprocessor capability on chip as the transistor density increases.