Comments about TSMC’s 2004 Technology Forum - Moore’s law is not broken, its just slowed down. Not a true statement, just wishful thinking. There seems to be a fear that if we declare Moore’s law is over, that the whole semiconductor business is over.
There are still only 40 products in development in 90nm, about twice as many as a year ago (yet production comes in the second half of this year). 90nm was announced two years ago but still not in production. Just as SOC design looks feasible the development costs becomes crushing. For 65nm, the low power flavor is coming first; which is not typical of previous process introductions.
At 65nm they are using SiGe EPI.
Photomask costs are not coming down soon. To do PSM & OPC some people are using 1000 processors to handle one mask.
At 90nm the mask cost is estimated to be 2-5% of the total cost of developing a chip (this is an estimate from p. 22 of the 2004 TSMC Technology Symposium Book). So at $2 million dollars for a mask set, we have $40-100 million total cost for a new chip. Consider that $30-40 million is a high number for raising venture capital; not many startups will be playing in this market space.