Beyond scaling - teaching the old dog some new tricks [Semiconductor technology]

While the semiconductor industry has been focused on the challenges of scaling, it has become quite apparent that one must take a broader view of delivering productivity and performance gains in this new regime of non- classical scaling. While transistor level and interconnect performance will continue to make strides through the innovative use of stress engineering, novel materials such as high k dielectrics in the front end and low k dielectrics and high conductivity interconnects in the backend, there is much more to be gained by addressing the issues of memory integration, on- chip decoupling and autonomic chip functions.