Looking Back at 60 Years of Moore’s Law

Written by Entegris | Apr 18, 2025

Looking Back at 60 Years of Moore’s Law

On the 60-year anniversary of the publication of what became Moore’s Law, let’s look back and remind ourselves what it’s about.

Here are the basics: Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, predicted in 1965 that innovations in research and development would allow manufacturers to fit twice as many transistors into an integrated circuit every two years. Because this prediction is so fundamental to the history of computing, it’s worth exploring more about it – what it is, what it isn’t, and how manufacturers are continually challenging the laws of physics to uphold Moore’s Law.

Understanding Moore’s Law

Moore’s Law is a prediction and a goal – not a scientific law or a law of physics. Gordon Moore observed that transistors were shrinking at a predictable rate with twice as many transistors being fit into an integrated circuit every year. The law wasn’t formulated all at once. Moore’s initial prediction was published on April 19, 1965, when he answered a question posed by Electronics Magazine asking about his predictions for the next 10 years of computing. Moore initially predicted a doubling every year and then revised his prediction about 10 years later.

In its final form, Moore’s Law predicted that chipmakers would be able to double the number of transistors within an integrated circuit once every two years.

Chipmakers have deliberately pushed themselves to uphold Moore’s Law. Until 2016, the semiconductor industry built their roadmaps with Moore’s Law in mind. As semiconductor manufacturing matures, however, the industry is running up against the limits of what’s possible with existing materials.

Moore’s Law isn’t absolute and even Moore himself admitted that his prediction couldn’t hold forever. As transistors enter the Angstrom era, it becomes harder and more costly to develop and manufacture them. As a result, instead of doubling every two years, transistor densities now double approximately once every 30 months.

Upholding Moore’s Law

Semiconductor manufacturers continue to test the laws of physics by pursuing smaller nodes. There are a few ways to continue pursuing the economic pathway laid out by Moore’s Law. These include:

Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Photolithography
EUV is currently the most advanced unit process for manufacturing semiconductor wafers, with the exception of a forthcoming upgrade called High Numerical Aperture EUV. It involves blasting droplets of molten tin with a laser to generate light in the extreme ultraviolet spectrum. Current-generation EUV machines can create features as small as 13 nanometers, and feature sizes as small as 8 nanometers are planned for the near future.
Advanced Packaging
One challenge with Moore’s Law is that doubling the number of transistors doesn’t directly equate to doubled processing power. That’s because the separate components of a system – such as processing and DRAM – are usually placed on a board and connected by lower-bandwidth wires that act as a bottleneck. With advanced packaging, the separate chiplets that comprise these components are instead stacked and bonded together. This enables much faster throughput, allowing manufacturers to effectively increase processing speeds without worrying about transistor density.
New Interconnect Materials
Transistors within wafers communicate with one another using interconnects. Tungsten used to be the material of choice for interconnects, but shrinking transistor sizes are beginning to make it obsolete. Molybdenum shows extremely low thin-film resistivity and does not require a liner between itself and the dielectric. By switching to molybdenum, chipmakers will be able to support even smaller semiconductor architectures.

In addition, research continues on technologies that would fundamentally alter the nature of computation. Quantum computing would allow computers to achieve faster processing speeds by harnessing the subatomic properties of matter. Biological computing would replace processors with lab-grown neurons. More realistically, researchers have proposed replacing traditional doped silicon with new materials such as graphene or indium gallium arsenide.

Supporting Moore’s Law at Entegris

What Moore’s Law really illustrates is the power of exponential growth. With the consistent doubling predicted by the law, computers have increased processing speed at lower costs. The phone in your pocket is now more powerful than the computers that controlled the first crewed spaceflight to the Moon. Computers allow us to research advanced pharmaceuticals, explore photorealistic videogame worlds, and ride in autonomous vehicles – achievements that would have been unthinkable in Moore’s day.

Here at Entegris, we’re focused on developing the solutions and materials needed to keep Moore’s Law in effect. Whether it’s developing reticle pods for EUV lithography, front-opening universal pods (FOUPs) for 3D-stacked wafers, or precursors, pads, slurries, and cleans for molybdenum interconnects, we’re helping to pave the way for advanced node manufacturers to make even further improvements.