Communications of the ACM
Moore's Law Meets Exascale Computing
Moore's law will end during the decade of exascale computing, predicts a new white paper. The document anticipates that complementary-symmetry metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, which the semiconductors behind exascale computing will initially employ, will reach its limit sometime within the middle of the next decade when the size of transistors reaches roughly seven nanometers.
One of the core recommendations of the white paper's authors is greater government funding to step up the assessment, research, and development of technologies to replace CMOS, as a forerunner to commercial production 10 to 15 years ahead. Simply switching technologies is not a cure for high-performance computing, as the growth in the peak performance of supercomputers has outpaced CMOS scaling.
The addition of more chips will not compensate for CMOS scaling's inevitable end, and it is already assumed that the processor count, memory capacity, and other components will need to expand significantly to achieve exascale levels, and the higher failure rates will have to be addressed separately. The paper's authors stress that smarter utilization of processor circuitry must be pursued in order to deal with the issue of CMOS technology's power consumption.
From HPC Wire
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