To Keep Pace With Moore's Law, Chipmakers Turn to 'Chiplets'

In 2016, the chip industry's clock ran out. For 50 years, the number of transistors that could be squeezed onto a piece of silicon had increased on a predictable schedule known as Moore's law. The doctrine drove the digital evolution from minicomputers to PCs to smartphones and the cloud by cramming more transistors onto each generation of microchip, making them more powerful. But as the smallest features of transistors reached about 14 nanometers, smaller than the tiniest viruses, the industry fell off its self-imposed pace. The 2016 edition of a biennial report that usually renewed an industry pledge to sustain Moore's law abandoned that focus to consider alternative paths forward.