The Long Arc of Semiconductor Scaling

I planned to write a chiplets explainer this week while traveling to and from CadenceLIVE in San Jose… but I got sucked into the broader chiplets backstory while doing research. After all, chiplets are a semiconductor manufacturing and scaling story of sorts! So I’m pivoting. This post shares the fun historical arc of transistor and IC scaling and concludes with the problems chiplets set out to overcome. A future post will pick up where this leaves off, discussing chiplets and their trade-offs. So sit down, relax, and enjoy the show! Goodbye Vacuum Tubes, Hello Solid-State Electronics The story of semiconductor scaling begins with the earliest discrete transistors, connected to make simple circuits like this: A whopping 3-transistor card used in the IBM 1401 computer. This 1401 computer launched in Oct 1959. Source Notice how this system has three transistors, each residing in its own package. Although quaint by today’s standards, this transistor-based logic was a welcome replac ... Read full article.