Moore's Law To Flatten Out

By Gregory Mone Posted 09.19.2007 at 3:26 pm 5 Comments

It's got to stop sometime. That's the message from Intel co-founder and computer visionary Gordon Moore, whose 1965 prediction that the number of transistors on a chip would double roughly every two years proved startlingly true. But Moore's Law, as it's known, can't apply indefinitely.

On an NPR show recently, Moore explained that he sees his famous axiom expiring in about 10 to 15 years. Eventually scientists will run into a wall trying to uncover new ways of jamming in more transistors. But let's hope that this time he's wrong.—Gregory Mone

Via ExtremeTech

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5 Comments

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popsci

09/20/07 at 9:51 am

When are three dimensional integrated circuits going to be necessary? They would validate Moore's law.

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popsci

11/20/07 at 2:13 pm

Get thee behind me Satan

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popsci

11/30/07 at 6:46 pm

Nice kettle of fish

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Daxcious

04/01/08 at 2:33 pm

Ok the above two comments are just disturbing.

Anyway, I belive the answer to this is in using something other than transistors to flip those 1's and 0's. I'm sure Intel and AMD are doing intensive reasearch in this area and they will be ready to make the change one it is a necessary step. Who knows what the new "transistor" would be, whether bilogical or electrical. Or perhaps a hybrid?

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scinow

10/13/09 at 3:04 pm

As usually, NPR has an incredibly narrow view and understanding. In this case they were incapable to go outside of the silicon box. New paradigms will continue propel the Moore's law as it was true in the past (switches, lamps, transistors, ICs, ...). In each cycle the current technology (now silicon ICs) reaches technological limits and declines as the new paradigm takes over and continues the exponential growth.

What is interesting is that this growth eventually leads to transforming the energy into "knowledge" (the amount of energy committed to "storing" information keeps increasing) which possibly will lead us to a singularity. So, is entropy really an increasing-only proposition or our current state of thermodynamics needs some overhaul?????