Loesch / Chroust Technologies Changing Our World

21 Perspectives 2000 bis 2020
2. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-7526-4933-8
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 292 Seiten

This book is a venture that, as far as we know, has never been tried before. It is a more than a two- decennial overview of the evolution, status and future of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) transgressing from technology to economy, sociology and its way of changing our life and of developments, which might affect our future personally and as society. The individual papers were delivered as invited keynote lectures at the the annual IDIMT Conferences (see www.IDIMT.org) from 2000 to 2020. These lectures were designed to satisfy the interested non-technical audience as well as the knowledgeable ICT audience, bridging this gap successfully without compromising on the scientific depth. It offers an opportunity to analyze evolution, status, challenges and expectations over this dramatic period. Additionally the multidiscipline approach offers an unbiased view on the successes and failures in technological, economic and other developments, as well as on the astonishing high quality of technological forecasts. Seldom has a single technology been the driving force for such dramatic developments, looking at the intertwined developments as the computer becoming a network and the network becoming a social network and is even changing the way, the world changes. Economically documents emphasize the fact that the three top value companies in the world are ICT companies. Many deep-impact innovations made in this periods are reviewed, with information technology enabling advances from decoding the genome to the Internet, Artificial Intelligence ,Big Data, Deep computing, Robotics to Communication technology to mention a few. The impact literally reaches from on the bottom of the sea, from fiber optics cables communications, up to satellites, turning the world into a global village and continue to do so. Discussing the scenario of the last 25 years, we have the privilege to discuss this in the presence of eye witnesses and even of contributors to these developments to which these personalities contributed and enabled these lectures. Special appreciation for their engagement and many valuable discussions goes 'in parts pro toto' to Prof. Gerhard Chroust and Prof. Petr Doucek and their teams.

Christian-Werner Loesch graduated at the Technical University in Vienna, where he received a Master of Science (Physics/Electronics) and PhD (nuclear and semiconductor physics). After working as scientific staff at the Institute of Experimental Physics, he qualified as Austrian candidate for CERN (Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire), Geneva as Fellow (Research). Upon the successful completion of his research project he was delegated to Directorate for Scientific Affaires of OECD (Organisation Européenne de Cooperation et Developpement) Paris. During his work at OECD in Paris, IBM offered him a position in IBM. He choose Austria where he followed an IBM Career path including positions as e.g.: Director of the Vienna Branch office up to Assistant to the IBM President (EMEA). Consecutively he held various executive positions including Director of Plans and Controls, Director of Operations, Asst. General Manager for Eastern and Central Europe. In addition he was accomplishing various special assignments ranging from the introduction of the PC in Europe or the European Supercomputing Project. As Gen. Mgr. of the IBM Academic Initiative he initiated and implemented the establishment of Austria's international internet connection (backbone to CERN) and the Vienna node, as well as computing centers in Budapest, Prague, Warsaw and other Central and Eastern European capitals thus the integration of these former 'behind the Iron Curtain' university facilities into the international networks. Both during and after his activities at IBM up to the present Loesch was lecturing, key note speaker at conferences, holding seminars at various locations from Forum Alpbach to private consultancies and Universities. The special background and experience of Loesch combining technology, economy, business and assessment of future opportunities enables the multilateral scope of view and analysis you will find in these lectures.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Loesch, Christian Werner

Chroust, Gerhard

Leseproben

IDIMT 2020

TECHNOLOGIES CHANGING OUR WORLD

Christian W. Loesch

IBM ret. [e-mail]

Keywords:

Abstract:

1. ECONOMIC SCENARIO

ICT industry has changed dramatically in the last few years, with 2019 being a turnaround year as shown by the economic developments of some key players of the industry below.

How and where are they achieving their impressive results:

Apple

- 4%

Amazon

+11%

Alphabet

+18%

Microsoft

+14%

IBM

+48%

• Apple: Diversifying
• Alphabet: Google, YouTube, etc. Adv.> 85% of rev.
• Microsoft: Most diversified, tax, five divisions each 20 %
• IBM: Not comparable due to new accounting standards

The worldwide market for chips has reached in 2017 the impressive volume of 412 b$ representing a rise of 21,6%. The IC market forecast (by IC Insights) for 2020 expected strong growth again of 8,0% and units shipments up 7,0%. In parallel a concentration process has reduced the number of leading edge chip manufacturing companies from 28 in 2001 to 5 in 2018.

Let’s hope that these successes have been used by the industry to build the resilience needed to overcome the events of 2020.

But the events of 2020 are changing the previous assumptions dramatically as shown below.

2. TECHNOLOGY

The twilight of Moore’s law does not mean the end of progress. Innovation will continue, but it will be more sophisticated and complicated. Remember what happened to airplanes? A Boeing 787 doesn’t go faster than a 707 did in the 1950s, but they are very different airplanes, with innovations ranging from fully electronic controls to a carbon-fiber fuselage. That may happen with computers. New EUV scanners will expand Moore’s law for the anticipatable future, but nobody should overlook the equally impressive tacit advances in performance, e.g. the current Intel Core i3 processor is 32% faster than the first top of the line Intel Core i7 at half the power consumption only.

The chip making process is getting exceedingly complex, often involving hundreds of stages, meaning that taking the next step down in scale requires a closely intertwined network of materials suppliers and apparatus developers and manufacturers etc. to deliver the right new developments at the right time. If you need 40 kinds of equipment and only 39 are ready, then everything stops.

Leading companies, are trying to shrink components until they limits of the wall of quantum effects. The more we shrink, the more it costs. Every time the scale is halved, manufacturers need a whole new generation of ever more precise photolithography machines. Building a new fab line today requires an investment typically measured in billions of dollars, an investment only few companies can risk and afford this like INTEL, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Samsung or TSMC. All of these companies rely on high volume manufacturing to finance the capital and the enormous R&D requirements to maintain their competitiveness,

The old market was characterized by producing a few different products, selling large quantities of them. The new market is producing a huge variety of products, but selling a few hundred thousand apiece, so costs of design and production has to be low. The fragmentation of the market triggered by mobile devices is making it additionally harder to recoup the investments. As soon as the cost per transistor at the next node exceeds the existing cost, the scaling stops. We may run out of money before we run out of physics.

Computing is increasingly defined by high-end smartphones, tablets, and other wearables, as well as by the exploding number of smart devices everywhere from bridges to the human body. These mobile devices have requirements different from their more sedentary cousins. The chips in a typical smartphone must send and receive signals for voice calls, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS, while also sensing touch, proximity, acceleration, magnetic fields, even fingerprints, demanding the device to host special purpose circuits. In this form the user value doubles every two years, Moore’s law will continue as long as the industry can keep successfully marketing devices with new functionality.

Advanced Digital Computing (More Moore)

As shown below leading companies expect Moore to continue for years. Digital CMOS is currently at the 14 nm node with potential to scale to 3 nm by 2022. The challenges are materials and process variation to achieve these with new technology at acceptable tool and fabrication costs.

2.1 Emerging technologies and paradigms.

We are on the threshold of revolutionary new computing paradigms. We can look forward to a decade of multiple technologies going to revolutionize the world of computing over the next 5-10 years.

Over the last decades, intensive efforts have been made on enhancing the capabilities and performance potential of III-V wide bandgap material systems such as Indium Phosphide, Gallium Arsenide, Silicon Germanium, Silicon Carbide, Gallium Nitride, and Aluminum Nitride.

Parallel to this evolves the architectural approach: stick with silicon, but configure it in new ways to using 3D to pack more computational power into the same space. 3D sequential integration is an alternative to conventional device scaling. Compared to TSV-based 3D ICs, 3D sequential process flow offers the possibility to stack devices with a lithographic alignment precision (few nm) enabling a density >100 million/mm2 between transistors tiers (for 14nm), to merge several technologies and materials with 3D sequential integration of various devices.

However, this rather works with memory chips, which do not have the thermal problem as they use circuits consuming power only when a memory cell is accessed.

We will also address some farther out are options and paradigmata like quantum computing, or neuromorphic computing. But most of these alternative paradigms has made it very far out of the laboratory.

Compound Semiconductor

Over the last several decades, industry, academia and government have collaborated to deliver the enhanced capabilities and performance potential of III-V wide bandgap material systems such as Indium Phosphide, Gallium Arsenide, Silicon Germanium, Silicon Carbide, Gallium Nitride, and Aluminum Nitride as well as recent work on ultra-wide bandgap compound semiconductors, subsystem and system levels.

Despite the potential for enhanced performance of III-V compound semiconductors, it has not been generally adopted for integration into consumer products. This is due to material complexity, high cost and a lack of requirements for the high power and advanced capability offered.

However, certain sectors in the commercial market have transitioned to compound semiconductor technology replacing silicon technology, specifically in wireless mobile communication infrastructure (base stations), CATV, IoT, automotive and energy sectors. As availability of compound semiconductor material continues to grow, specifically GaN/SiC, costs will decrease and integration into consumers’ systems will gain popularity.

Emerging technologies that may radically change the IT scenario are paradigms that diverge from simple transistor based logic and operations. Advanced Research is apparent for spintronic majority gate technologies including spin-based logic, graphene-based Tunneling Field Effect Transistor (TFET) technology and novel material FETs technology.

The evolution of transistor architecture and channel materials (MOSFET)

G. Ghibaubo, CNRS Grenoble

What makes these Nanotechnologies so appealing?

Remember: Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are hollow cylinders composed of one or more concentric layers of carbon atoms in a honeycomb lattice arrangement, with a typical diameter of 1-2nm. Depending on the arrangement of the carbon atoms, the CNTs can be either metallic or semiconducting, and are considered both for interconnect or as field effect transistors (FETs).

The expected benefits of FETs over Silicon based devices are:

• High mobility is very high in carbon nanotubes, significantly higher than in any other material, enabling higher speed, or reduction of the operating voltage and lower active power (heat).
• The tube diameter is controlled by chemistry not by printing, allowing to reduce the body dimension beyond what is achievable lithography. This allows the fabrication of aligned arrays with high packing density.
• The intrinsic capacitance is a quantum capacitance related to the density of states and independent of electrostatics. The device capacitance could hence be much lower than the FinFETs gate to channel capacitances, reducing the switching energy.

Ferroelectric semiconductors and two-dimensional devices

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