IceLake

Moore’s Law; the number of transistors in any Integrated circuit doubles every two years.

Have you ever wondered, how the size of a computer is getting smaller, processes becoming faster and swifter?

Numbers have always been a fantasizing fact for many of us. Talking about the numbers in the most lucid way, while discussing the electronics say, how many gates are used to make a flip flop, or how many transistors itself are used for making a AND gate. 

The transistors are the building blocks of a CPU and digital circuits. We need to shrink the size of transistors so that we can increase their count in the same unit area.

There we go, we have come down to 10nm technology, which has become a mere commercial name for the different manufacturers.

The fabrication technology is actually what the ‘nm’ numbers show but that also has a thing of the past now, as we have so many competitors in the market- Intel, Ryzen, Samsung etc. 

Bringing to you, the brief on Ice Lake, by the courtesy of Intel

What Intel’s 10nm brings is even better than the 7nm offerings of Samsung and TSMC.

What is Storage Capacity? Where do the bits go?

All the technology that we see around us will saturate to a point in time if the hardware is not upgraded, that is why we have so many options available for the ICs and giving it directly to you; processors. 

Let's go back to where it all started, ENIAC, the full room sized computer which was used for the basic calculation that too in a very conventional methods.

Look where we have reached now, GigaHertz ! The processors nowadays have the clock frequency in the GHz range. 

The Intel Icelake comes with a strong specification of having 4 cores, 8 threads, and operate at 4.1GHz in turbo boost mode.

The 14nm technology which was prevalent in the Intel's previous designs- Cannon Lake, had a number around 100 for the transistor density.

There is something known as Transistor Density, which is calculated in terms of MTr/mm² which stands for millions of transistors per square millimeter. 

How much you can fit into a small chip, that is the race!

Ice Lake isn’t the first time Intel has deployed its 10nm transistors. The very first batch was actually released under the Cannon Lake architecture in extremely limited quantities.

Is this the final trend?

No, Physicists have already started to call out for the collapse of Moore’s law!

According to Kaku, a theoretical Physicist:

"In about ten years or so, we will see the collapse of Moore's law. In fact all ready we see a slowing down of Moore's law. Computer power simply cannot maintain its rapid exponential rise using standard silicon technology". 

Intel Corporation has nodded for the same. Kaku adds when Moore’s law will collapse in the upcoming decade, then we will have to go to the molecular computers and thus finally to quantum computers.

Then, What’s next?

TIll the time, Moore’s law is valid, our very own known Tech Giants, Intel, AMD, and other chip makers gonna squeeze the last ounce of speed and power they can from the silicon designs.