CMOS technology: Present and future

Presently, we are going through an exciting phase of the semiconductor industry, as the miniaturization of the dimensions is accelerated and at the same time some of the fundamental limits of device scaling, as well as optical lithography, are rapidly drawing near. In this paper, the impact of these limits on the future development of CMOS technology are examined and some of the advanced device, interconnect, and functional integration techniques to further extend technology scaling are discussed. Beyond these advances, the spectacular success that the semiconductor industry has had can only continue by increasing the silicon chip functional integration, once the device performance and miniaturization starts to saturate. The success of this phase of the semiconductor business relies heavily on circuit and architectural innovations, aided by embedded technologies. The cost of the integrated system on a chip should remain significantly below the price of the system that it intends to replace in addition to delivering added performance.