"EUV is not a pipe dream. It is the shiny new penny, worldwide. It is something we will all have to get used to. I am excited about this future. Most all of the knowledge of mankind will be at our fingertips. The excuse for being ignorant this decade? There will be none."
Back in the 1980's, one of the technology companies I worked for, was the former Control Data. In the day, it was all that and a bag of chips (literally), when it came to being high tech. In fact, Control Data made its own chips in a multi-layer facility which was close to the campus. It was big stuff back then, and Control Data actually had to invest in some Sun Systems CAD/CAM units to facilitate the production. Compared to today, Control Data's multi-layer chips were like Fred Flintstone's car next to a Ferrari.
Last night I saw a YouTube video about Intel's new offering in the chip market. It utilizes the latest and greatest chip technology. It will not put Intel on top of the heap however - it will just allow them to keep up with the Jones's. And who are the Jones's? China, South Korea and so forth. Chip technology today is not for the weak of heart - nor for the light of wallet. Bu to get to the "golden rainbow" of chip technology, means to almost re-write Moore's Law.
This new technology is called Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. To work in this field today, you would have to get used to dressing for either a Level 10 or a Level 1 clean room every day. But the little bit of Intel's technology which was shown last night (most of it is highly proprietary), was something out of Star Wars. Lasers, nanotechnology, special polymers - all to make the coveted 7 nm chip. How small is 7 nm (nano meters)? One nm is one billionth of a meter. So the 7 nm chip would be seven billionths of a meter. That is 7/100,000 as thick as a piece of paper.
These chips exist today, only not by Intel. Intel plans to have the market stocked with its chips by mid 2021. Then the game really starts to change. Is this finally it? Working with material which is barely larger than a strand of human DNA? Not quite. Intel's group of wizards are already working on the next big thing. I am still trying to get my head wrapped around the EUV technology. This new technology is suppose to be even bigger and faster.
This is part of what will make the Roaring Twenties, roar. Small, fast chips will be a big part of our brave new world of AI, 5g and so forth. Once this technology becomes common and affordable, it will make our smart phones nothing less than brilliant. In our pockets, we will be be carrying around miniature computers which will be able to do just about anything, anytime and anywhere. With 5g alone, our current smartphones will be 100 times faster. With the new phones containing the new chips - who knows how fast 5g will drive them.
EUV is not a pipe dream. It is the shiny new penny, worldwide. It is something we will all have to get used to. I am excited about this future. Most all of the knowledge of mankind will be at our fingertips. The excuse for being ignorant this decade? There will be none.
And yet we will all suffer the consequences of the "iron rule of knowledge"-- the hardening of pre-formed opinion and the resulting fractious politics that are created by the overwhelming belief that because /somebody/ (on the www) knows something, we all know it equally well. And we do NOT. So somebody tells us what a particular politician or policy is about, and we accept it or reject it immediately because that somebody /knows/. Even now, way too many people KNOW that manmade global warming is real and something we must DO SOMETHING about. Yet a little bit of REAL knowledge would tell us this is USDA Prime baloney.
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