The semiconductor industry is that - an industry with numerous companies providing the materials, equipment, operations etc needed for Intel, TSMC, Samsung to build and run their fabs.
In order for this to work, there is a need for coordination. The manufacturers of steppers for example must be able to deliver a stepper that can draw features with the needed resolution at a given time. Since the development takes time, they and everybody else needs to communicate and decide how fast Moores law progress.
Moores law thus represents what all parties agree to are what can be achieved and can meet the end user requirements over time. The industry organisation responsible for this is ITRS - The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors:
If one wants to see the predictions for Moores law, ITRS have documents available that are well worth studying. When I worked on ASIC design for mobile handsets we looked at these documents for product roadmaps since we could predict the power consumption, gate density etc for future process nodes.
Intel can to a higher degree than many others move forward at their on pacing. But they don't make their own fab from scratch nor produce their materials all by themselves. This means that even if Intel is able to develop a process in the lab that provides smaller feature size, efficiency and whatnot than what is agreed upon. But they can't move that much faster than the rest of the industry if they want to manufacture chips in commercial quantities.
In order for this to work, there is a need for coordination. The manufacturers of steppers for example must be able to deliver a stepper that can draw features with the needed resolution at a given time. Since the development takes time, they and everybody else needs to communicate and decide how fast Moores law progress.
Moores law thus represents what all parties agree to are what can be achieved and can meet the end user requirements over time. The industry organisation responsible for this is ITRS - The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors:
http://www.itrs.net/
If one wants to see the predictions for Moores law, ITRS have documents available that are well worth studying. When I worked on ASIC design for mobile handsets we looked at these documents for product roadmaps since we could predict the power consumption, gate density etc for future process nodes.
Intel can to a higher degree than many others move forward at their on pacing. But they don't make their own fab from scratch nor produce their materials all by themselves. This means that even if Intel is able to develop a process in the lab that provides smaller feature size, efficiency and whatnot than what is agreed upon. But they can't move that much faster than the rest of the industry if they want to manufacture chips in commercial quantities.