U.S. Could Lose Race for Nanotech Leadership, SIA Panel Says
Online staff -- EDN, March 16, 2005
At a news conference in Washington, D.C., today, U.S. semiconductor industry CEOs and an economist stressed the importance of continued progress and leadership in semiconductor technology since the coming transition to nano-scale semiconductor devices means leadership in IT is up for grabs.
Organized by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the conference included Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corp.; Steve Appleton, CEO of Micron Technology and current chairman of the SIA; Dale Jorgenson, a Samuel W. Morris University professor at Harvard University; and George Scalise, president of the SIA.
Following the vision of Moore's Law, the U.S. semiconductor industry has led the worldwide industry, contributing key innovations that have helped drive America's economic growth. The panelists noted that four decades of continuous advances in microchip technology have led to creation of entirely new industries, including PCs, the Internet and cellular phones, while enabling major advances in biotechnology, medicine and environmental protection.
SIA called for support of basic research in the physical sciences to be stepped up in order to assure continued U.S. technology leadership. Experts believe current semiconductor technology could run up against physical, technological and economic limits around 2020, the SIA reported.
“U.S. leadership in technology is under assault,” Barrett said in a statement. “The challenge we face is global in nature and broader in scope than any we have faced in the past. The initial step in responding to this challenge is that America must decide to compete. If we don’t compete and win, there will be very serious consequences for our standard of living and national security in the future."
Barrett also said industry scientists believe current CMOS scaling that supports Moore’s Law can remain in effect for at least another 10 to 15 years but when the smallest features on a chip shrink to less than 10nm, current chipmaking technology will reach its ultimate limits.
To keep Moore’s Law alive, the industry will have to leave Newtonian physics behind and transition to the realm of quantum physics -- the era of nanotechnology.
“U.S. leadership in the nanoelectronics era is not guaranteed,” Barrett also said. “It will take a massive, coordinated U.S. research effort involving academia, industry, and state and federal governments to ensure that America continues to be the world leader in information technology."
Further, the panelists agreed that sustaining continuous advances in semiconductor technology is vital to sustaining improved U.S. economic performance.
“The mantra of the ‘new economy’ is faster, better, cheaper, which characterizes the speed of technological change and product improvement in semiconductors, the key enabling technology,” Harvard’s Jorgenson said.
Development and deployment of information technology is the foundation of the American growth resurgence that has occurred since 1995 and the economics of information technology begins with the precipitous and continuing fall in semiconductor prices, Jorgenson suggested.
The rapid price decline has been transmitted to the prices of a range of products that rely heavily on this technology, like computers and telecommunications equipment and swiftly falling prices for information technology equipment have provided powerful economic incentives for rapid diffusion of information technology, which in turn has led to accelerated economic growth and strong increases in productivity, he continued.
“The four IT-producing industries -- semiconductors, computers, communications equipment and software -- are responsible for a quarter of the growth resurgence, but only 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Obviously, the impact of the IT-producing industries is far out of proportion to their relatively small size,” Jorgenson noted.
At the same time, Appleton called for a concerted national effort to increase the resources devoted to R&D in the physical sciences.
“Our current efforts are inadequate,” Appleton said. “Federal funding for R&D as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product has been almost cut in half over the past 20 years. We must return to the investment levels of the mid-1980s in order to compete for leadership.”
SIA also said its leaders are to call on legislative and executive branch leaders to support increasing research budgets for the physical sciences in the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Defense.
Specifically, the SIA is calling for increases of 7 percent per year in the research budget of the NSF for 10 years, doubling the research budget over that period; an appropriation of $20 million to match the semiconductor industry’s support for the Focus Center Research Program, which supports pre-competitive research on microelectronics technology at 30 universities to ensure continued U.S. leadership throughout the remaining years of the CMOS era; an increase of $20 million to enhance the nanomanufacturing and nanometrology research capabilities of NIST; and an increase in funding for the Math and Science Partnership program of the No Child Left Behind act.
“U.S. leadership in technology is not inevitable,” Appleton added. “Leadership in information technology is a cornerstone of our national strategy for economic growth, an improving standard of living, and national security.
“The actions we take today to ensure continued U.S. leadership will determine the quality of life enjoyed by our children and grandchildren,” Appleton concluded.
