Despite increasing development costs, IC manufacturers continue to make great strides.
The advancement of the IC industry hinges on the ability of IC manufacturers to continue offering more performance and functionality for the money. As mainstream CMOS processes reach their theoretical, practical, and economic limits, lowering the cost of ICs (on a per-function or per-performance basis) is more critical and challenging than ever. The 500-page, 2019 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry (released in January 2019) shows that there is more variety than ever among the logic-oriented process technologies that companies offer. Figure 1 lists several of the leading advanced logic technologies that companies are presently using. Derivative versions of each process generation between major nodes have become regular occurrences.
Figure 1
