I think you are correct, technically the end of Dennard scaling is separate.
> This has failed, but transistor scaling [...] has not
Not entirely true, around the same time Dennard scaling ended, transistor channel length scaling also slowed down significantly (Although I don't know if they are directly related). It's not a short topic and i'm no expert, but the summary is that process node name values no longer directly relate to transistor dimensions, and scaling has become more "strategic".
In my mind the end of Dennard scaling marked the beginning of the end of the road. The challenges are becoming more fundamental and yet process node reduction no longer yields the same benefits - meanwhile it's becoming realistic to count cross sectional areas in terms of numbers of atoms... the road really is short.
Although that is still a proxy for transistor scale - what's interesting is your plot shows that in terms of density transistor scale is still managing to follow a log scale trend, in spite of the fact transistor scaling itself stopped being uniform long ago.
> This has failed, but transistor scaling [...] has not
Not entirely true, around the same time Dennard scaling ended, transistor channel length scaling also slowed down significantly (Although I don't know if they are directly related). It's not a short topic and i'm no expert, but the summary is that process node name values no longer directly relate to transistor dimensions, and scaling has become more "strategic".
In my mind the end of Dennard scaling marked the beginning of the end of the road. The challenges are becoming more fundamental and yet process node reduction no longer yields the same benefits - meanwhile it's becoming realistic to count cross sectional areas in terms of numbers of atoms... the road really is short.
Not that we wont find another road ;)