Rock's law

Rock's Law, named for Arthur Rock, says that the cost of a semiconductor chip fabrication plant doubles every four years. As of 2003, the price had already reached about 3 billion US dollars.

Rock's Law can be seen as the economic flipside to Moore's Law; the latter is a direct consequence of the ongoing growth of the capital-intensive semiconductor industry—innovative and popular products mean more profits, meaning more capital available to invest in ever higher levels of large-scale integration, which in turn leads to creation of even more innovative products.

The semiconductor industry has always been extremely capital-intensive, with very low unit manufacturing costs. Thus, the ultimate limits to growth of the industry will constrain the maximum amount of capital that can be invested in new products; at some point, Rock's Law will collide with Moore's Law.

It has been suggested that fabrication plant costs have not increased as quickly as predicted by Rock's Law [http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/3752 Rock's Law Fails to Hold] ] , and also that the fabrication plant cost "per transistor" (which has shown a pronounced downward trend) may be more relevant as a constraint on Moore's Law.

External links

* CNET: [http://news.com.com/Semi+survival/2009-1001_3-981418.html Soaring costs of chipmaking recast industry]

References