Impact of scaling and the scaling development environment

Dr. Robert Dennard's 1974 paper looked rather simple at first and did not attract much attention at Toshiba. It wasn't until CMOS acquired dominance in the mainstream of integrated circuit (IC) design that scaling theory became the physics-based guiding principle for Moore's Law to continue. Without scaling theory, the author doubts that Moore's Law could have survived for more than three decades. It was the first attempt to couple geometry shrink with other important factors such as power-delay products, on-chip interconnect performance and integration density.