Commentary Evgeni Gousev

 

Towards next Giga Opportunities

 

• Evgeni Gousev
• Qualcomm
• egousev@qti.qualcomm.com

This event celebrates 15th anniversary of the Nano-Giga Forums. The first NGCM conference took place in Moscow in September 2002 and I had a privilege to participate and helped to organize it. Looking back 15 years ago, one can appreciate how much progress and technology innovations have happened in a relatively short timeframe, less than one human generation. Back then, small number of fortunate people used bulky mobile phones for voice calls only and the most advanced underlaying CMOS technology in the core of the devices was based on 90 nm ground rules. Significant investments by the industry, leading edge research in the academia and major breakthroughs in materials, process technologies and integration have resulted in unprecedented devices scaling to below 10 nm (yes, just few tens of silicon crystal lattice dimensions). In turn, this enabled effectively “free” compute and “free” communications. More than half of global population owns a smartphone now, uses it frequently for data and internet and takes this as granted. And, 15 years from now, technology world is going to be a different place again. Robots and drones will widely assist people in daily professional and home life. Trillions of sensors will be deployed everywhere and connected in a network to gather huge amount of data in real time, forming a backbone of the internet of things. Car and people driving “habits” will be very different from today with car sharing and autonomous driving becoming as popular as making a phone call today. Artificial intelligence will play a major role in the society with both positive and negative implications. Major advances in biomedical technologies, drug discoveries and personalized precise medicine will significantly enhance quality of life and longer lifespan. All these major “Giga” transformations will be enabled by new foundational technologies, many of them starting at the “Nano” level. Therefore, I look forward to NGC-2017 to learn more about the “latest and greatest” science and technologies that will propel our progress into the future.

Our Sponsors and Partners