Moore's Law in CLEAR Light

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new holistic figure-of-merit called CLEAR that explains past semiconductor development, predicts continued growth with photonics, and unifies existing trends like Moore's Law and Makimoto's wave.

Contribution

The paper proposes the CLEAR merit as a comprehensive, multi-hierarchical metric that accurately models semiconductor progress and forecasts photonics as the future extension.

Findings

CLEAR accurately postdicts historical development since 1940s

Photonic technologies can sustain the 12-month doubling rate of CLEAR

Electronic technologies are unable to maintain the same pace as photonics

Abstract

The inability of Moore's Law and other figure-of-merits (FOMs) to accurately explain the technology development of the semiconductor industry demands a holistic merit to guide the industry. Here we introduce a FOM termed CLEAR that accurately postdicts technology developments since the 1940's until today, and predicts photonics as a logical extension to keep-up the pace of information-handling machines. We show that CLEAR (Capability-to-Latency-Energy-Amount-Resistance) is multi-hierarchical applying to the device, interconnect, and system level. Being a holistic FOM, we show that empirical trends such as Moore's Law and the Makimoto's wave are special cases of the universal CLEAR merit. Looking ahead, photonic board- and chip-level technologies are able to continue the observed doubling rate of the CLEAR value every 12 months, while electronic technologies are unable to keep pace.