Believe that the recent attention of the hardware news friends, have learned that Intel ready to change the “Tick-Tock” mode of product information. Intel will be a period of two years for a cycle of hardware upgrades, change to the process – Architecture – (PAO) of the three step strategy. This message from the 10-K to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Intel documents can be confirmed. This also marks the Intel processor products will be officially changed from two years to an upgrade cycle for three years an upgrade cycle, which also appeared over 50 years of Moore’s law caused a huge impact.
The reason, in fact, is the result of the interaction of many factors. First of all, nature is the pressure of the manufacturing process. It is well known that processor produced by the basic raw material is silicon, when we failed to find more effective alternatives, the progress of the process to face a challenge to limit once again, the attendant is exponential growth in the manufacturing costs. At the same time, higher accuracy means lower yield, so that once again increase the cost of production of the product. When the manufacturing cost of a product is much more than the sales price it should have, it is very difficult to put into the market in the form of consumer products.
Also from the SNB era, alone of the lifting process has been difficult to significantly enhance the processor performance, so processor manufacturers must find a more effective way to upgrade, in order to continue to promote industry processor performance leap, which like when the Pentium series processors in performance bottlenecks, Intel chose dual core and hyper threading the same. The processor market is still in the performance bottleneck, so Intel need more time to develop, adjust and improve the processor’s products.
Moore’s law of life
In the above we mentioned the “Moore’s law”, which was raised by Intel Moore, one of the founders of Gordon, in 1965. Its content is: when the price is constant, the number of components can be accommodated on the integrated circuit, about every 18-24 months will be doubled, the performance will be doubled. This law has been verified for half a century, not only in the field of micro processing chips, including semiconductor memory and system software, including the development and upgrading of Moore’s law and the content of the agreement.
Only part of the microprocessor, from 1979 the 8086 and 8088 to 1982 802861985 years of 803861989 years of 804861993 years of Pentium, pentiumpro in 1996 and 1997 PentiumII, function more and stronger, prices and lower, every update is direct result of Moore’s law. At the same time, the memory storage capacity of PC machine expanded from the earliest 480k to 8M, 16M, which is more consistent with Moore’s law.
In order to better follow this certain law, Intel in 2007 for its processor products launched the “Tick-Tock” upgrade mode. The tick represents process, tock on behalf of the architecture, and “tick tock” principle is measured in years, so summarize “tick tock” is every year launched a new generation of products, next year is on the basis of new process introduction of new architecture products.
Why do you want to abandon Moore’s law
Chip giant Intel of the strategic transformation, led directly to the results is the following products no longer follow Moore’s law for two years as a hardware upgrade cycle principle, from the current market situation analysis, the emergence of this situation is inevitable. First of all, to silicon as the raw material manufacturing process, has reached a bottleneck stage, when we can not find a valid substitute in a short time, the pace of development of natural to slow down.
Secondly, the processor’s heating problem has been one of the problems to be solved. From a macro point of view, the more sophisticated equipment, the heat will be smaller, but when the processor’s manufacturing process to a certain extent, the silicon circuit in the electronic moving faster and faster, the chip began to become overheated. Although including Intel, many manufacturers are constantly strive to solve the heat problem, such as multi core design, 3D transistor technology, but in the processor core to eight or more, many programs are not fully utilized to all of the core, which resulted in the performance of non equivalence.
Vendor strategy deviates from the Moore’s law and an important reason is currently mobile devices popular, traditional desktop has been unable to meet the people’s increasing needs, mobile equipment for the heating and power consumption of the processor has a more stringent requirements. And different mobile devices for the processor’s parameter needs are different, which led to the processor manufacturers can not be as large as before the same model of mass production of products, once again raised the cost of production of the product.
Future challenges and opportunities
Of course, from the shackles of Moore’s law, it is not entirely a bad thing. Due to the presence of Moore’s law, the hardware manufacturers more or less will according to Moore’s law to develop their own product development planning, part of the products really get rapid progress, but there are also a part of this product should be developed more rapidly, but in order to follow Moore’s law, and maintain and other manufacturers synchronization, deliberately slowed down the pace of progress.
When some more manufacturers are no longer based on Moore’s law, is bound to produce more creative and leap of the product. Software industry is the same reason, in order to pursue the ultimate efficiency, programmers can rely on the hardware platform that should be able to appear in the next few years, the preparation of more advanced applications.
On the other hand, stage accumulating electric, Samsung and other chip makers in order to seek better development, is bound to take more radical product strategies and the process of ascension to the limit, may find better chip manufacturing materials. At the same time, the quantum computer may also accelerate the development, can be faster from the theoretical stage into the actual product.
Overall, Intel replacement of the product development strategy, does not mean that the failure or end of Moore’s law, it does not mean that the semiconductor industry is going to die. Perhaps when manufacturers find a better way to develop, Moore’s law will return to another form of return to our vision.
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