The future of the electronics industry beyond 2D/3D scaling

The semiconductor industry has been and remains the engine of the electronics revolution that has completely change society for the better. 2D transistor performance and transistor count have steadily increased for the past 70 years. 2D “geometrical scaling” was the engine of the semiconductor industry until the end of the previous century. By that time some fundamental physical limits were reached and overcome by completely restructuring the transistor and replacing some of the original materials. This second era was named “equivalent scaling”. In this decade, memory technologies have already reached the cost effective limits of 2D scaling and have migrated to “3D power scaling”. Logic will transition to 3D structures and architectures in the near future. However, 3D power scaling will also reach practical topological limits in the next 15 years and it will be then necessary to implement computing techniques that operate with more than one bit in any physical location to support the 4th age of Moore’s Law. What can the electronics industry do to get ready for it?