Rock's law or Moore's second law, named for Arthur Rock or Gordon Moore, says that the cost of a semiconductor chip fabrication plant doubles every four years.[1] As of 2015, the price had already reached about 14 billion US dollars.[2]

Rock's law can be seen as the economic flip side to Moore's (first) law – that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles every two years. The latter is a direct consequence of the ongoing growth of the capital-intensive semiconductor industry— innovative and popular products mean more profits, meaning more capital available to invest in ever higher levels of large-scale integration, which in turn leads to the creation of even more innovative products.

The semiconductor industry has always been extremely capital-intensive, with ever-dropping manufacturing unit costs. Thus, the ultimate limits to growth of the industry will constrain the maximum amount of capital that can be invested in new products; at some point, Rock's Law will collide with Moore's Law.[3][4][5]

It has been suggested that fabrication plant costs have not increased as quickly as predicted by Rock's law – indeed plateauing in the late 1990s[6] – and also that the fabrication plant cost per transistor (which has shown a pronounced downward trend[6]) may be more relevant as a constraint on Moore's Law.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "FAQs". India Electronics & Semiconductor Association. Archived from the original on 2017-11-20. Retrieved 2013-04-09.
  2. ↑ Armasu, Lucian (8 May 2015). "Samsung's New $14 Billion Chip Plant To Manufacture DRAM, Processors In 2017". Tom's Hardware. Reuters.
  3. ↑ Dorsch, Jeff. "Does Moore's Law Still Hold Up?" (PDF). Edavision.com. Archived from the original on 6 May 2006.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  4. ↑ Schaller, Bob (1996). "The Origin, Nature, and Implications of 'Moore's Law'". Research.Microsoft.com. Archived from the original on 13 November 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  5. ↑ Tremblay, Jean-François (26 June 2006). "Riding On Flat Panels". Chemical & Engineering News. 84 (26): 13–16. doi:10.1021/cen-v084n026.p013.
  6. 1 2 Ross, Philip E. (2003). "5 Commandments: The rules engineers live by weren't always set in stone". IEEE Spectrum.
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