... has grown more sophisticated, improvements in manufacturing are the key to the way Intel has been able to double its speed performance every 18 months. By making parts of the chip smaller, they use less electricity, and more parts can be packed into the same space. Semiconductor manufacturing is probably nearly unique among high-technology industries in combining three characteristics, each of which has some parallels in other industries but the combination of which in the semiconductor industry may be unique. The first is the sheer complexity of the product and process technologies, meaning that the ability of a manufacturer to predict the performance of a new manufacturing process is very limited. In effect, you are not able -- you are dealing here with a technology that in some sense has a relatively modest scientific or theoretical underpinning. It's developed on the basis of trial and error in many cases and is ...

See this essay or coursework document in full right now