why didn't chips suddenly jump from 100um to 100nm scale?
Another point is that Moore's Law is at least partially self fulfilling. If you are a Chip Fabrication company you need to spend money to make new technologies, the smaller you want things to be the more money you have to spend. You could spend a comparatively huge amount of money and leap ahead of all of the competition, but then you'd have to charge more than the competition for your services. All of your customers are expecting things to progress according to Moore's law, so they won't be prepared to spend the extra money. I suppose ideally you want to be just ahead of the competition, not way ahead. I hope that makes sense, I found that hard to articulate.
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Another point is that Moore's Law is at least partially self fulfilling. If you are a Chip Fabrication company you need to spend money to make new technologies, the smaller you want things to be the more money you have to spend. You could spend a comparatively huge amount of money and leap ahead of all of the competition, but then you'd have to charge more than the competition for your services. All of your customers are expecting things to progress according to Moore's law, so they won't be prepared to spend the extra money. I suppose ideally you want to be just ahead of the competition, not way ahead. I hope that makes sense, I found that hard to articulate.