# Roadmapping of Nanoelectronics for the New Electronics Industry
## 9 The Continuously Evolving Supply Chain
#### Bringing the Node Nomenclature Back to Normal  
Technology nodes were previously defined from 1992 by NTRS, ITRS and IRDS by the densest metal layer to be found in any integrated circuit leading to the smallest pitch. Half pitch of the tightest metal layer was the original definition of the node (Figure 8), which was correlated to the gate length of the devices till the 1990s, leading to both density and performance with a single number. A new technology generation used dimensions of 70% of the previous one. Figure 7: Source: Statista, Sales of smartphones saturated in 2017 then declined in 2020 (* forecast). Since the mid-1990s, a 2-year cycle for microprocessor technologies was adopted instead of the previous 3-4 years cycle, due to the adoption of the PC by the consumers. The demands of higher performance induced a faster evolution of the gate length of the MOSFETs with a 60% reduction compared to the previous generation, and an averaging of the dimensions of the gate length and half-pitch to define the node name. Later on, some companies used only the gate length to define the technology name, and finally a 70% reduction of the node name was proposed compared with the previous generation, independently of the real physical dimensions! (See Figure 9.)  
Some companies are announcing technology nodes below 1 nm by the end of this decade. In order to stay closer to the technology, the IRDS has adopted a node definition related to the NTRS and ITRS ones (Figures 10 and 11). Figure 8: Technology node definition used by the previous Roadmaps. Figure 9: Evolution of technology node definition used by industry. In Figure 11, the following parameters are reported:  
* Top line: year for the introduction of a given technology into manufacturing;
* Second line: details of the node, with G indicating the dimension of the contacted gated pitch and M the dimension of the tightest metal pitch;
* Third line: \"industry labeling\" of technology, not correlated to reality. The reduction of the contacted gate pitch is used mainly for the increase of the transistor density, and does not have a great influence on the performance of ICs due to the severe power limitations mentioned above. The semiconductor industry mainly focused on the reduction of power consumption, which had become a major issue. The speed of the transistors is still progressing but not at the same rate as the one in the 1990s. In any case, Moore's Law and the associated scaling will continue in the next 10 years allowing for substantially increased transistor density. Figure 11: IRDS Roadmap for the next years. Notes: Mx—Tight-pitch routing metal interconnect, IDM—integrated device manufacturer, FinFET—fin field-effect transistor, LGAA—lateral gate all around, EUV—extreme ultraviolet, NA—numerical aperture, Ge—germanium, SiGe—silicon germanium. RMG—replacement metal gate, VLSI—very large-scale integration, W2W—wafer to wafer, D2W—die to wafer, Mem-on-Logic—memory on logic. Figure 10: Technology node adopted by IRDS. However, feature scaling will reach fundamental limits in the next decade (around 7-8 nm), as shown in Figure 12, which is consistent with the prediction of the equipment industry. However, in the 2030s, other computing architectures will be able to significantly contribute to the advancement of the electronics industry. **10. 5G and Beyond Roadmap Has Become the \"International Network Generations Roadmap\"**  
The operational frequency of the cell phones started from 800-900 MHz in the 90 s with the (GSM) Global System for Mobile Communications to presently 2500-2700 MHz ranges for 4G and LTE. In the past few years, the 5G communication infrastructure, with higher frequencies was launched. In 2017 IEEE decided to launch a new network roadmap for 5G due to the complex transition between the different communication eras. Indeed, 5G is a broad new platform covering multiple aspects of communications, including multiple bands up to the 20-40 GHz and -60 GHZ ranges.