The Performance of a Transistor

Hypothesis 

The performance of a transistor is inversely proportional to its size; the smaller the transistor, the better its performance.

Description of the review of current research literature 

There has been increased debate in the past concerning the performance of transistors. In 1965, Gordon Moore, a chipmaker and the founder of Intel wrote a paper on the number of transistors that can be bundled into an IC. According to Moore, the number of electronic components in an IC doubled every two years. Since then, the trend has remained constant for over 40 years. The predicted doubling of the components and every two years since the 1970’s Intel 4004 means that the performance could increase by four million times. Intel’s 4004 comprised of 2300 transistors in its chips and even though there is little transistor information in recent chips, it is estimated the Xeon Haswell E-5 has 5 billion transistors in its 22 nm.

Hypothesis testing 

To test the hypothesis, a comprehensive research is conducted through exploratory techniques and inferences made to affirm or nullify the theory. The original hypothesis may be modified to reflect the available data.

The equipment that is required for this research include:

• Computers

• Hard disk

• Writing materials

• Camera

The research will be conducted and concluded within a period of 6 months. The different phases of the research will be allocated to the given timeframe and effort made to accomplish every task without delays. Some factors will inevitably affect the research. A good example is the source and credibility of data. Knowledge of transistors and their performance parameters is principally a trade secret of many manufacturers. Intel, the leading microprocessor manufacturer, do not publish its transistor counts for Skylake chips, of course for businesses functions. Therefore, looking up data on the transistor counts of the major microprocessor will be a challenge. One way of mitigating the challenge is strictly adhering to selection criteria to ensure only relevant sources are captured.

Resources 

The methodology that I will use to probe the literature for this study is exploratory. There are large amounts of research on transistors and ICs, but not much is known whether Moore’s laws is still applicable. Over time there seem surging numbers of people predicting the death of Moore’s law. Exploratory research is appropriate to establish the myths and truth concerning the performance of ICs and their size. The resources that I will utilize include published articles in databases such as UMUC. An example of a database I will use for research includes Computers and Applied Sciences Complete and IEEE Computer Society Digital Library. The criteria for inclusion of research material include relevance to the topic area, time of publication, and peer reviewed.

Web sources 

The web sources that forms the starting point for this research include:

Technology Quarterly after Moore's Law retrieved from http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-03-12/after-moores-law 

Statistical Methods for Semiconductor Manufacturing http://www-mtl.mit.edu/researchgroups/Metrology/PAPERS/stats.pdf 

The web sources are instrumental to understanding the concept of transistors and its evolution since the 1970s. The material will provide the example as well as inform on the likely preservation of Moore’s law beyond 2020.

Data presentation 

The data will be presented in the form of graphs, charts, diagrams and images. Apart from explaining the concepts more clearly, the presentations will visually depict trends, phenomenon, and complex theories.

Reference

Kalpakjian, S., & Schmid, S. R. (2014). Manufacturing engineering and technology (p. 913). K. V. Sekar (Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA: Pearson.