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Article: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: chip design. (semiconductor design)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- February 4, 1995
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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AS NEW materials come to hand, architects find new uses for them. With cheap steel beams and glass came the modern skyscraper, complete with the new technologies of high-speed lifts and service cores. The same principle holds even if the scale of the building is smaller--100m times smaller, say. Computer architects make the most of the building components available, and the types of chips that result all need different technologies to work.
The changes in the materials available to chip makers are changes in both abundance and cost. The number of components that can be put on to a chip has grown by 40% a year. The cleverness of designers, who have used the capacity ...