nanoREV.

Keeping up with Moore’s Law: The Saga Continues

You know something is in the works when the government starts name-dropping new acronyms. Ever heard of SEBML? Don’t know what SEBML stands for? Well you’re in luck! The National Science Foundation (which of course is well known by its own acronym: NSF) has included a request for funding of Science and Engineering Beyond Moore’s Law in the department’s FY ‘09 budget sent to Congress a few weeks ago.

While it’s been reported (several times) that in chip-technology’s current form, the trend of doubling transistor density every 18 months will meet it’s maker (i.e. quantum mechanical limits) a little before the year 2020, it’s nice to see that the funding to keep things on track is being requested so visibly. In fact, NSF has requested $20-million in FY’09 "to create a truly coherent program across the Foundation with the funding to encourage transformational activities as well as creating partnering opportunities with the private sector and national laboratories to accelerate innovation." Some of these funds will actually be funneled through several existing programs that also have their own acronyms: American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), Networking and Information Technology Research and evelopment (NITRD) and our local favorite, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). Not a bad start for organizing an SEBML effort, but only $20 million? This really doesn’t provide much of a sense of urgency. After all, some of the "private sector" they refer to must include giants like Intel who could probably sneeze that money out in a second if they really wanted to "accelerate innovation." Still, I hope that Congress is able to understand the importance of developing new technology to control quantum electron tunneling in transistors having high-k dielectric gate oxides as transistor size is decreased. Afterall, several grad students are counting on them! On a side note, I wonder if Dr. Wolf of Lattice Press will now offer some new SEBML books to complement my current standard reference text for Moore’s Law knowledge: Silicon Processing for the VLSI Era.