Despite the much-debated end of Moore's Law, CMOS scaling still maintains economic relevance with 2nm gate-all-around SoCs (Intel 18A) already in high-volume manufacturing since January 2026. Area scaling extensively driven by design/technology innovations co-optimized for primarily logic scaling continues to offer compelling node-to-node power, performance, area, and cost benefits. In this tutorial, we will start with a walk through memory lane, recounting a brief history of transistor evolution to motivate the migration from the planar MOSFET to the fully depleted FinFET. We will summarize the key process technology elements that have enabled the finFET CMOS nodes, highlighting the resulting technology characteristics and challenges. This will set the stage for transitioning to the nanoribbon gate-all-around device architecture and unveiling the magic of how these devices are fabricated.
Alvin Loke is a Senior Principal Engineer at Intel, San Diego, working on analog design/technology co-optimization for Intel’s gate-all-around CMOS. He has previously worked on CMOS nodes spanning 250nm to 2nm at Agilent, AMD, Qualcomm, TSMC, and NXP. Alvin received a BASc from the University of British Columbia, and an MS and PhD from Stanford. After several years in CMOS process integration, he has since worked on analog/mixed-signal design, focusing on a variety of wireline links, including chiplet IOs, design/model/technology interface, and analog design methodologies. Alvin has been an active IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) volunteer since 2003, having served as AdCom Member, CICC Committee Member, Webinar Chair, Denver and San Diego Chapter Chair, as well as JSSC, SSCL, and Solid-State Circuits Magazine Guest Editor. He currently serves as the VLSI Symposium Secretary, SSCS Global Chapters Chair, and again as SSCS Distinguished Lecturer. Alvin frequently speaks on CMOS technology and its impact on analog design, having authored invited publications including the CICC 2018 Best Paper and short courses at ISSCC, VLSI Symposium, CICC, and BCICTS. His publications have received over 1900 citations to date.