The limit of conventional CMOS technology, according to Broadcom representative - is 5 nm, and then zoom out process technology will no longer be possible. As a result, the number of transistors per unit area of the crystal stops growing, and Moore's law will pass to the museum.
Note technologist one of the leading developers of network processor looks at the problem from their point of view. Broadcom's concern issues of increasing the capacity of active network equipment and networks as a whole. Mr. Samuel is calm about the prospects for the emergence of networks with terabit speeds, but the capacity of the equipment at the level of one or more petabit he does not expect to survive. Specifically looked, as an engineer of 58 years. With luck, he might live another 20 years.
At the moment the capacity of the network hardware doubles approximately every two years. This trend will continue for another 15 years or so. The company explains that limit of CMOS process development - this is an important point when dealing with customers. There will come a time when the Broadcom and other developers will not be able to offer something new. Hopefully, the second scenario happens after termination of Moore's Law, so that at a certain point to meet the growing traffic demand will have to come up with new paradigms in the architecture of the network equipment and networks.
As a temporary workaround Broadcom company sees the layout of 3D-ICs. The company expects to add to the composition of its processors 3D-crystals in 2015, and it will be a layer of silicon photonics - optical switching elements in the processor. Also, production costs increase significantly with the transition to 20 nm solutions as will consistently use the mask and two, respectively, two processing.