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How Much Longer Does The Semiconductor Industry Have ?

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How much longer does CMOS have ?

Is it wise to do a PhD in CMOS ?

Please share opinions.
 

Hi,
Nice question Puppet1.
Personally I think that the Moores law will be reached in 20 years. The solution will be probably the one sigle electron transistor or perhaps the optical transistors which uses photons.
My question is what skilled people will do or new graduated that have only experience in CMOS ?
 

Right now they are saying Moores law will be reached in 10 years or sooner.
 

Even if the limit is reached in 10 years (something I do not believe) it will be followed up by a new technology using old technology from other fields maybe even CMOS. Basics are always the same no matter what technology. Even if the industry would stop using CMOS/ Si based today we will be using the technology for the next 30 years simply because it´s always cheaper in the first 20 years than new technology.
 

What I think is going to happen is that the feature size will eventually be reduced so that there are so few charge carriers in operation that their discrete contribution to the total current will be large. This will put a large noise current on the steady state bias current or signal current.
 

I agree with all of you.

My problem lies in the fact that the industry is consolidating and all these companies cannot exist and stay in business. We have already seen this in RFIC and ASICs and just a few companies still around doing it -- since it is not exactly a high profit margin business to be in.

So, with so many professors and students and universities working on these topics and not so many things in industry in the way of companies and jobs, I am just wondering what to do.

There are so many RFIC professors (my interest) in the world ! But so few companies.

So, are semiconductors now like plastics in the 60's and steel in the 30's ? There is not much left to do with CMOS anymore in terms of pure innovation.

Have we reached saturation ?
 

Do not feel worry. Nothing is ever and it always worth to do a phd (especially if you are interested in researching).
But you never know what you will do after 10-20 years. Engineering is in progress. People who learned in the tube days made the semiconductor buiness.
Learn as much as you can, not a waste of time.
If you are a very good RFIC engineer. you will learn other fields very easily...(don't forget there was time when analog design was said to be dead and analog engineers survived :) ).
I know some guys who was modelling semiconductor devices in 20 years ago and now they are in stock business, modelling the stock market :).
Everyday learning for your whole life :-DD !
 

so drabos,

what is the lesson,

should we all get into the stock business :)

seriously cell phones and wlan are now commodities like beef and chicken.

are we going to scale down cmos to 1micron ?
 

Actually the lesson maybe: learn what you like, work what you can :-D

Stock is just an example :), but there are many stories about electrical engineers, who were success in ither fields, too and more stories about engineers who are succes in more field of electrical engineering.
Just think on that: many old rf engineers became DSP engineer (many countries nowadays the wireless business is just software, DSP design, so they had to move to these fields ad they could do it easily)
 

i understand that.

but for people still in the semiconductor industry... where companies are merging, laying off, acquiring others, being acquired and so on, it is a bit different.

are you suggesting just leaving chips ?
 

are you suggesting just leaving chips ?
Click to expand...

Actually I don't understand exactly what means leaving chips, I can just estimate is.

I guess the situation is not so bad, but it depends on the region.
 

All industries grow and then become mature. Aircraft design is one example. There are still jobs designing them but there are much fewer jobs than 40 years ago. There are also fewer manufacturers than 40 years ago.
 

I think it is worthwile to go for a PH.D always. However, seriously chose where you get it.
 

is there a market for microwave and mm-wave CMOS circuits, devices and applications besides the 60ghz radios ?
 

what about collision radars in automotive, they are in approx. 70 GHz (150 GHz)....
 

i am considering doing a PhD in microwave and millimeter wave CMOS.

i think it is interesting but really will there be ANY companies or JOBS in this ?

right now there are about 10 companies doing R&D in this.

i mean 45nm will last until about 2012 then after that i think cmos is done.

i would want to become a professor but even there, i know so many professors in rfic with no funding and also students never get jobs.
 

by doing PHD...........ur gonna become a doctor in that field...........and u will easily get a post of PRINCIPAL in any engineering college................
 

Dear People, CMOS still has a long way to go !. Look at this site..

**broken link removed**

They do not use light but electron beams and no masker at all !!!!!!!!!!!...

I live very close to this company :))...
 

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