Motion Control Solutions For The Semiconductor Industry

From Micrometers to Nanometers and Beyond

Nanometer precision was not really required when Intel developed their first microchips. The structure widths of the Intel 4004 processor back in 1971 were a generous 10 microns, or 1/100 of a millimeter, humongous compared to today’s structures of 10 nanometers and less. That’s 1,000 times smaller on a 1-dimensional scale, but 1,000,000 times on a planar level. This shrinkage process, known as Moore’s law, stipulates a doubling of the number or electronic circuits every 18 months. This development was predicted by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, back in 1965. 

Lately, the integration of photonics and electronics (Silicon Photonics) has led to another step forward both in performance and reduction of power consumption, important when it comes to the environmental impact of the huge server farms required for cloud computing and Big Data applications. Basically, miniaturization of semiconductor components is a combination of faster, cheaper, more economical, and more reliable – higher integration means fewer individual components and thus, lower risk of failure.