International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS™) 2020 Edition
2020 IRDS Executive Documents
Executive Summary
The IEEE International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS) is the continuation and extension of the National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors/International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (NTRS/ITRS) with a record of uninterrupted publications spanning from 1992 to 2015. The IRDS has followed several of the successful methodologies demonstrated by the NTRS/ITRS with additional expansion to system integration, data centers and Internet communications requirements as well as quantum computing and quantum communications. The IRDS has been previously published in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
2020 IRDS International Focus Teams (IFTs) Roadmap Reports
Application Benchmarking
The mission of the Applications Benchmarking1 (AB) International Focus Team (IFT) is to identify key application drivers, and to track and roadmap the performance of these applications for the next 15 years. Given a list of market drivers from the Systems and Architectures International Focus Team (SA IFT), AB generates a cross matrix map showing which application(s) are important or critical (gating) for each market.
Systems & Architectures
The Systems and Architectures section of the roadmap serves as a bridge between application benchmarks and component technologies. The systems analyzed in this section cover a broad range of applications of computing, electronics, and photonics. In this chapter, we identify key challenges and technology requirements by observing the patterns in play in the systems and architectures anticipated during the period under study
Outside System Connectivity
With the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, high data rate internet applications and IoT, communication rates in data centers need to grow to support high speed access and provide high speed low latency communication between servers, special AI processors and memory or other servers. With increased use of high resolution video, virtual reality, and augmented reality applications, ever higher data rate communication with lower latency is required in data centers. Communication between racks and switches is carried by optical interconnects; however, the capacity of switches is increasing faster than the capacity of fiber interconnects. Also, the power consumed by the switches in data centers is ~approximately 30% of the power consumed in the data center. To reduce switching power and overcome the fiber capacity gap, companies are working to integrate silicon photonic I/O into the switch package. There are also efforts to extend fiber into the server into packages and thus reduce power. Currently, short range (<100m) fiber communication uses VCSELs with multi-mode fiber, which has a significant cost and power advantage over single mode communication. There is an interest in employing single mode fiber communication throughout data centers. However, there are significant technical challenges with developing and implementing single mode fiber with low loss and cost for these applications. These challenges will be discussed in this chapter.
Read the full chapter…
More Moore
The More Moore International Focus Team (IFT) of the International Roadmap of Devices and Systems (IRDS) provides physical, electrical, and reliability requirements for logic and memory technologies to sustain power, performance, area, cost (PPAC) scaling for big data, mobility, and cloud (e.g., Internet-of-Things (IoT) and server) applications. This is done over a time horizon of 15 years for mainstream/high-volume manufacturing (HVM). Read the full chapter…
More Moore tables file (XLSX)
Factory Integration
The Factory Integration (FI) chapter of the IRDS is dedicated to ensuring that the microelectronics manufacturing infrastructure contains the necessary components to produce items at affordable cost and high volume. Realizing the potential of Moore’s Law requires taking full advantage of device feature size reductions, new materials, yield improvement to near 100%, wafer size increases, and other manufacturing productivity improvements. This in turn requires a factory system that can fully integrate additional factory components and utilize these components collectively to deliver items that meet specifications determined by other IRDS international focus teams (IFTs) as well as cost, volume, and yield targets. Preserving the decades-long trend of 30% per year reduction in cost per function also requires capturing all possible cost reduction opportunities. These include opportunities in front-end as well as back end production, facilities, yield management and improvement, increased system integration such as up and down the supply chain and improving environmental health and safety. FI challenges play a key role realizing these opportunities and many FI technology challenges are becoming limiters to achieving major technology milestones.
Factory Integration tables file (XLSX, 216 KB)
Factory Integration Potential Solutions file (XLSX)
Lithography
Historically, improvements in lithography have been key enablers to make improved chip technologies. The International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS) Lithography roadmap predicts how current patterning capability can support future chip generations and where challenges and improvements are needed. It gives a roadmap of expected key lithography requirements. It is intended to be used by semiconductor industry participants, by industry analysts, and by researchers who want or need to know how the industry will evolve in the future and what challenges need to be addressed. Read the full chapter…
Lithography tables file (XLSX)
Yield Enhancement
The Yield Enhancement Chapter of IRDS is dedicated to ensuring that semiconductor wafer processing environment is best equipped for identifying, reducing, and avoiding yield-relevant defects and contamination. Read the full chapter…
Metrology
The Metrology Chapter identifies emerging measurement challenges and knowledge gaps in devices, systems, and integration in the semiconductor industry and describes research and development pathways for meeting them. This includes, but is not limited to, measurement needs for CMOS transistors, novel devices beyond CMOS, technologies for interconnects and chiplets architectures, and materials characterization for process development in integrated devices and systems. This also includes advances in metrology required for research and development, process control and device / system performance assurance in manufacturing environments. Read the full chapter…
Beyond CMOS & Emerging Materials Integration
Dimensional and functional scaling1 of CMOS is driving information processing technology into a broadening spectrum of new applications. Scaling has enabled many of these applications through increased performance and complexity. As dimensional scaling of CMOS will eventually approach fundamental limits, new information processing devices and microarchitectures for both existing and new functions are being explored. This is driving interest in new devices for information processing and memory, new technologies for heterogeneous integration of multiple functions, and new paradigms for system architecture. This chapter, therefore, provides an IRDS perspective on emerging research device technologies and serves as a bridge between conventional CMOS and the realm of nanoelectronics beyond the end of CMOS scaling. Read the full chapter…
Beyond CMOS tables file (XLSX, 162 KB)
Beyond CMOS EMI tables file (XLSX)
Cryogenic Electronics & Quantum Information Processing
The goal of this International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS) chapter is to survey, catalog, and assess the status of technologies in the areas of cryogenic electronics and quantum information processing. Application drivers are identified for sufficiently developed technologies and application needs are mapped as a function of time against projected capabilities to identify challenges requiring research and development effort.
Cryogenic Electronics & Quantum Information Processing tables (XLSX)