90, 45, and on to 22nm

Here is an interesting article in the Financial Times on the economic limits of Moore's law. The article gives an interesting account of which type of fabs the various chip manufacturer have. It also states Intel's (my brand new employer) statement that only companies with about $9bn in annual revenue (give or take a dime) 'can afford to be in the business of building new fabs', that reduces the playing field quite a bit.

The question on when Moore's law is going to end has been ongoing for a while and multicore has given it a bit of a boost with 'simply' putting more cores in a package (as opposed to more transistors per core).

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