Fast Net News, DSL Prime, DOCSIS Report

Shang-yi Chiang announced TSMC, the world's largest foundry, expects to enter 20nm "risk production" in the second half of 2012. Volume production at a reasonable cost will likely follow in 2013 or 2014. The most advanced communications chips are currently produced at 45nm, and the more advanced manufacturing will allow about 3 times the capabilities at a roughly similar cost as well as considerably reduced power consumption. In DSL, state of the art 100 megabit VDSL2 chips could be cranked out at close to the cost of today's ADSL chips, or a slew of now separte functionality can be included on the same chip. I'd guess you could include 802.11n WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, enough packet processing to run 4 HD channels down and two up, and maybe even an LTE femtocell.

    This is further confirmation that Moore's Law improvements are likely to continue for many years. Morris Chang of TSMC spoke of their technology choices for 14nm and no technologist doubts that further improvement will be practical in a few years. That capability will enable matching the processing power of the iPhone 4G in a $75 phone around 2015-2017, so it's reasonable to expect nearly everyone in the developed world to be carrying a smartphone better than any on the market today later in the decade.