The term die shrink (sometimes optical shrink or process shrink) refers to the
scaling
Scaling may refer to:
Science and technology
Mathematics and physics
* Scaling (geometry), a linear transformation that enlarges or diminishes objects
* Scale invariance, a feature of objects or laws that do not change if scales of length, energ ...
of
metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices. The act of shrinking a
die is to create a somewhat identical circuit using a more advanced
fabrication process
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are p ...
, usually involving an advance of
lithographic
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
nodes. This reduces overall costs for a chip company, as the absence of major architectural changes to the processor lowers research and development costs while at the same time allowing more processor dies to be manufactured on the same piece of
silicon wafer
In electronics, a wafer (also called a slice or substrate) is a thin slice of semiconductor, such as a crystalline silicon (c-Si), used for the fabrication of integrated circuits and, in photovoltaics, to manufacture solar cells. The wafer serv ...
, resulting in less cost per product sold.
Details
Die shrinks are the key to improving price/performance at
semiconductor companies such as
Samsung
The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
,
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
,
TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semiconductor company, the world' ...
, and
SK Hynix
SK hynix Inc. is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips and flash memory chips. Hynix is the world's second-largest memory chipmaker (after Samsung Electronics) and the world's third-largest semiconductor company. ...
, and
fabless
Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...
manufacturers such as
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...
(including the former
ATI
Ati or ATI may refer to:
* Ati people, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines
**Ati language (Philippines), the language spoken by this people group
** Ati-Atihan festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines
*Ati language (China), a ...
),
NVIDIA
Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
and
MediaTek
MediaTek Inc. () is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that provides chips for wireless communications, high-definition television, handheld mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers, navigation systems, consumer multimedia ...
.
Examples in the 2000s include the downscaling of the
PlayStation 2's
Emotion Engine
The Emotion Engine is a central processing unit developed and manufactured by Sony Computer Entertainment and Toshiba for use in the PlayStation 2 video game console. It was also used in early PlayStation 3 models sold in Japan and North Americ ...
processor from
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...
and
Toshiba
, commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...
(from
180 nm CMOS in 2000 to
90 nm
The 90 nm process refers to the level of MOSFET (CMOS) fabrication process technology that was commercialized by the 2003–2005 timeframe, by leading semiconductor companies like Toshiba, Sony, Samsung, IBM, Intel, Fujitsu, TSMC, Elpid ...
CMOS in 2003),
the codenamed
Cedar Mill Pentium 4
Pentium 4 is a series of single-core CPUs for desktops, laptops and entry-level servers manufactured by Intel. The processors were shipped from November 20, 2000 until August 8, 2008. The production of Netburst processors was active from 200 ...
processors (from 90 nm CMOS to
65 nm
The 65 nm process is an advanced lithographic node used in volume CMOS (MOSFET) semiconductor fabrication. Printed linewidths (i.e. transistor gate lengths) can reach as low as 25 nm on a nominally 65 nm process, while the pitch ...
CMOS) and
Penryn Core 2 processors (from 65 nm CMOS to
45 nm
Per the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, the 45 nm process is a MOSFET technology node referring to the average half-pitch of a memory cell manufactured at around the 2007–2008 time frame.
Matsushita and Intel started mass ...
CMOS), the codenamed
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...
Athlon 64 X2
The Athlon 64 X2 is the first native dual-core desktop central processing unit (CPU) designed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). It was designed from scratch as native dual-core by using an already multi-CPU enabled Athlon 64, joining it with ano ...
processors (from
90 nm
The 90 nm process refers to the level of MOSFET (CMOS) fabrication process technology that was commercialized by the 2003–2005 timeframe, by leading semiconductor companies like Toshiba, Sony, Samsung, IBM, Intel, Fujitsu, TSMC, Elpid ...
SOI
''Soi'' ( th, ซอย ) is the term used in Thailand for a side-street branching off a major street (''thanon'', th, ถนน). An alley is called a ''trok'' ( th, ตรอก).
Overview
Sois are usually numbered, and are referred to by th ...
to
65 nm
The 65 nm process is an advanced lithographic node used in volume CMOS (MOSFET) semiconductor fabrication. Printed linewidths (i.e. transistor gate lengths) can reach as low as 25 nm on a nominally 65 nm process, while the pitch ...
SOI
''Soi'' ( th, ซอย ) is the term used in Thailand for a side-street branching off a major street (''thanon'', th, ถนน). An alley is called a ''trok'' ( th, ตรอก).
Overview
Sois are usually numbered, and are referred to by th ...
), various generations of
GPU
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...
s from both ATI and NVIDIA, and various generations of
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* ...
and
flash memory chips from Samsung, Toshiba and SK Hynix. In January 2010, Intel released
Clarkdale Core i5
The following is a list of Intel Core i5 brand microprocessors. Introduced in 2009, the Core i5 line of microprocessors are intended to be used by mainstream users.
Desktop processors
Nehalem microarchitecture (1st generation)
"Lynnf ...
and
Core i7
The following is a list of Intel Core i7 brand microprocessors. Introduced in 2008, the Core i7 line of microprocessors are intended to be used by high-end users.
Desktop processors
Nehalem microarchitecture (1st generation)
"Bloomfield" ...
processors fabricated with a
32 nm
The 32 nm node is the step following the 45 nm process in CMOS ( MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication. "32- nanometre" refers to the average half-pitch (i.e., half the distance between identical features) of a memory cell at this technology ...
process, down from a previous
45 nm
Per the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, the 45 nm process is a MOSFET technology node referring to the average half-pitch of a memory cell manufactured at around the 2007–2008 time frame.
Matsushita and Intel started mass ...
process used in older iterations of the
Nehalem processor
Processor may refer to:
Computing Hardware
* Processor (computing)
**Central processing unit (CPU), the hardware within a computer that executes a program
*** Microprocessor, a central processing unit contained on a single integrated circuit (I ...
microarchitecture. Intel, in particular, formerly focused on leveraging die shrinks to improve product performance at a regular cadence through its
Tick-Tock model. In this
business model
A business model describes how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value,''Business Model Generation'', Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, and 470 practitioners from 45 countries, self-published, 2010 in economic, soci ...
, every new
microarchitecture (tock) is followed by a die shrink (tick) to improve performance with the same microarchitecture.
Die shrinks are beneficial to end-users as shrinking a die reduces the current used by each transistor switching on or off in
semiconductor devices
A semiconductor device is an electronic component that relies on the electronic properties of a semiconductor material (primarily silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide, as well as organic semiconductors) for its function. Its conductivity l ...
while maintaining the same clock frequency of a chip, making a product with less power consumption (and thus less heat production), increased
clock rate
In computing, the clock rate or clock speed typically refers to the frequency at which the clock generator of a processor can generate pulses, which are used to synchronize the operations of its components, and is used as an indicator of the pr ...
headroom, and lower prices.
Since the cost to fabricate a 200-mm or 300-mm silicon wafer is proportional to the number of fabrication steps and not proportional to the number of chips on the wafer, die shrinks cram more chips onto each wafer, resulting in lowered manufacturing costs per chip.
Half-shrink
In CPU fabrications, a die shrink always involves an advance to a
lithographic
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
node as defined by
ITRS (see list). For GPU and
SoC manufacturing, the die shrink often involves shrinking the die on a node not defined by the ITRS, for instance, the 150 nm, 110 nm, 80 nm, 55 nm, 40 nm and more currently 8 nm nodes, sometimes referred to as "half-nodes". This is a stopgap between two ITRS-defined
lithographic
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
nodes (thus called a "half-node shrink") before further shrink to the lower ITRS-defined nodes occurs, which helps save additional R&D cost. The choice to perform die shrinks to either full nodes or half-nodes rests with the foundry and not the integrated circuit designer.
See also
*
Integrated circuit
*
Semiconductor device fabrication
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are p ...
*
Photolithography
*
Moore's law
*
Transistor count
The transistor count is the number of transistors in an electronic device (typically on a single substrate or "chip"). It is the most common measure of integrated circuit complexity (although the majority of transistors in modern microprocessors ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
0.11 µm Standard Cell ASICEETimes: ON Semi offers 110-nm ASIC platformRDA, SMIC make 55-nm mixed-signal ICGlobalfoundries 40nmUMC 45/40nmSiliconBlue tips FPGA move to 40-nmGlobalfoundries 28nm, Leading-Edge TechnologiesDesign starts triple for TSMC at 28-nm
Integrated circuits
Semiconductors