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Gordon Moore On Moore's Law
missingmatterboy writes: "Technology Review has a wide-ranging interview with Gordon Moore, wherein he discusses the future of computers, his famous 'Moore's Law,' the need for better education, the environment, and finally, why he, along with Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, picked up the tab for SETI. Cool guy." Who better to ask about the future?
The magic 8-ball has a better grip on the future than Jon Katz.
"Largely unknown to the public, the whole notion of education has been radically transformed over the years, so that it no longer means conveying the accumulated knowledge and understanding of a civilization, but shaping children's psyches and indoctrinating their minds with politically correct ideologies. Not only are there individual education gurus and ideological movements which promote the intrusion of such activities into the schools, the educators themselves are apostles of this new mission and the nationwide teachers' union -- the National Education Association -- is pushing the same agenda." --Thomas Sowell
Therefore probability of detection is p=p0*(r/N).
Ah, the lesser known p0rn's law.
I don't see that much difference in the stock performance of Intel and AMD. Looks like they've followed each other fairly closely in the last year, although AMD has pulled ahead in the last couple of months:
= amd&a=v&p=s&l=on&z=m&q=l
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=c&c=intc&k=c1&t=1y&s
Selective memory, perhaps? AMD announced the 1GHz Athlon mere hours before Intel announced the Penium III 1GHz. It's a shame that such a lame bunch of partisan "misrememberance" is rated so highly.
Linux user since early January 1992.
My cock is bigger than your cock.
With all due respect for one of the true giants of the semiconductor and IT industries, but I don't think he has to be the best man to ask about the future. Not because he says so himself (for those who didn't read the article: he does), but because he's been involved in it for so long already.
In general, the fate of all experts (especially in a world moving as fast as ours does nowadays) is that, with aging, they inevitably get to a point where they don't see the changes coming anymore. They end up relying more and more on extrapolations of their own (sometimes vast, but still very limited) knowledge and experience. At some point these extrapolations break down completely. IMHO, it's a rare person who understands this to be applicable to himself or herself in time. Those who do, stop making predictions years into the future anyway.
--
Linux user since early January 1992.
Well it has a great deal to do with the chance of finding intelligent life on THIS planet.
But it doesn't. The cheapest laptops have been around $1000 forever now. When can I buy one for $500?
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heh. Both wrong. :)
Bill Watterson, in Calvin & Hobbes...
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
If those researchers would take the time to look around them, they would probably start to question whether humanity is the most advanced form of life even on our own planet.
Pardon my disrespect, but Moore's law
seems to be more of a tool than anything
else these days... I think that perhaps we're
more capable of a year. Then again, what
would I know, I'm just a frustrated consumer.
You guys remember how long ago the P3 1Ghz came
out?
This article says that the Moore's Law says the number of transistors will double every two years. I always heard it was every 18 months.
That was metric years.Trolling is a art,
I once read an article (or was it a chapter of a book? Can't remember now) discussing the infamous "Drake Equation" (regarding the probability of detecting intelligent life via SETI).
The author had pointed out that the variable intended to represent how long a form of intelligent life existed before dying off really meant "how long a form of intelligent life broadcasts detectably in the radio spectrum", as far as SETI is concerned.
The author then speculated that strong, readily detectable radio signals from Earth will have been going roughly 100 years before cable, fiberoptics, and other "non-broadcast" means of communication start supplanting them.
He then plugged THAT number into the Drake Equation and got...1.
"That must be us." the author quipped...
Not that I have a problem with SETI or anything, but I found the argument very interesting...
---
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Actually, clock speed has a lot to do with Moore's low. Moore's law is about increased transister density. Increased transister density translates directly to higher clock rates.
The .13 micron processes that are state of the art right now are actually pretty big compared to what would be required in a few years, at least by Moore's Law. The problem is that technologies are lagging behind the "Law". A prime example is in lithography. Commercially practical sub-.1 micron lithography doesn't exist. Extreme UV hopes to drive device sizes down to as low as .04 microns, but it's still very experimental, even in its 4th year of development.
Not to belittle Gordon Moore and his "Law", but I think that it's about to give out. Of course, what we call Moore's Law was really nothing more than an off the cuff remark by an "important person", so by following it, the semiconductor industry has validated it.
Anyway, I don't think that it matters whether or not the industry follows it...after all, what we're really after is faster, better devices. And if it's possible to get there without following Moore's Law, then what's the difference? I think that's where we're headed.
-h-
But perhaps the earlier generations of stars had planets that were so metal poor that no electrical science was possible? (Well, at least only one that involved ionic conduction.)
...
Or perhaps the small terrestrial planets couldn't form without the dense metalic cores?
Or perhaps MacroLife isn't interested in primitive planets. What would we have that they would want? (We may find ancient mines on the moons of Saturn or Neptune.)
Or perhaps the 2001 scenario isn't that far off. But we just don't know that the signal's been sent. (At slower than light, it takes awhile to respond. And it's an old civil service, that doesn't have us anywhere near the top of it's most important things to do today.)
Or
It is a mystery, but the plausible answers are so numerous that I object to it being called a paradox.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yes, that would be the difference. The little underdog competitor, in shaky economic times, is exploiting the weaknesses in the overlord.
--
Poliglut
Thank god I own AMD...
--
Poliglut
I wish there was another way, perhaps distance learning.
Libraries.
The funny thing is that really he's none of those things (nor do I support Bush nessicarily, I voted for Browne unlike all the posers here who claim to be libertarian). Ask non-tech friends who Moore is to find out just how famous he is.
In addition to the other fine reasons listed, you might also consider he was on an environmrntal advisory panel for Bush, and of course he plans to start a foundation helping the environment. I'm sorry if I was mistaken in assuming the original poster is on more important advisory panels and had more environmental foundations of their own than did Moore.
Frankly though, I thought that the "because he's smart" answer was about right and way more insightful than anything else I can offer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...then ask that question aloud once more.
Perhaps they are interested more in the quality of comments posted than letting any yahoo blather about anything they like. They are more into technical commentary than freedom of expression, and there is a place for that at times.
If you don't like it, start a "TRComments.org" site yourself and welcome all TR rejects to your site.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, how odd. Someone who probably knows an order of mangnitude more about the Kyoto treaty than you claiming that Bush is on the pragmatic end of protecting the environment and probbably will be OK, while you on the other had are pretty sure Bush would be willing to nuke all national parks from orbit, if only he had the nukes to spare.
I wonder who has the viewpoint that people should pay "moore" attention to? Happily for you around here it's sure not Moore!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think that we're pretty low on the curve of being able to find stuff in general, let alone inteligent life. I for one loose my keys and my wallet almost every day for at period of about five minutes and then there's my cell phone for which I sometimes conduct near-exhaustive searches of my domain only to find that it is in my pocket. I'm not the brightest but I know that there are a shitload of people dumber than me (e.g. Clinton/Gore supporters and the 70-odd percent of the population that believes in creationism instead of darwinsim). Granted some of the brightest minds on the planet are doing the searching but the fact that they rely on us--the ignorant masses--for their survival shows pretty clearly that they're no even near optimal vs. our actual capacity to conduct the search.
If the life is truely intelligent then it is avioding us because lord knows we're not too friendly. If you are an inteligent species outside of the planet earth and less powerful than us we'll probably conquer you and if you're more powerful then we'll do whatever we can to become more powerful so that we may later conquer you. Why do I think so? Well, that's pretty much been our modus operandus for all of recorded history.
Then there's the issue of what we can reliably detect. We do know for certian that every one of our ideas about physics basically only works in the domain we can easily observe and even sometimes in our observable domain we don't have good ways to explain what the hell is going on. Add the problem that we're pretty sure that most of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy that we can't even detect yet and you get the idea that as our gaze wonders past the limits of our biosphere our quality of perception decreases (i'm guessing!) exponentially.
There's some major drawbacks to our existance that I think will stunt our ability to overcome our myopia. One is the fact that we're trapped in linear time and we can only traverse our time in a single direction at a fixed rate. Also we live in only 3 physical dimentions. While this 3D existance seems pretty advanced to us (ask SGI or Nvidia) there's plenty of scientists out there much smarter than I am who are embarassed to try to even explain how we're missing out on the action in the higher echelons of dimentionality (why?--even the small portion of us who even accept the idea that there are more dimentions tend to forget about it pretty easily which is illustrated by the death-rate for passengers of motor-vehicles.)
Do I think we should give up because we won't find anything anyhow? Hell no! We aught to pour all our money and resources into searching, colonizing and exploring outer space. We've got nuclear weapons, acid rain, rising sea levels and major league baseball. That is proof enough for me that this planet is fucked and it really is time to move on. I, for one, have a lot of new and exciting ideas for how we can screw up other habitats and no one is going to let me try that stuff around here. I want to move on.
If you haven't noticed the USA is the most powerful and free country in the world because it was created by people who habitually run away from civilization because they would rather try to survive alone in an (relatively) unknown wilderness than live with the schmuks they grew up with. Did I mention that a lot of the time the wilderness to which they ran posed significant threats of death, dismemberment or even boredom. Well guess what? There's no more wilderness! We filled it with schmuks! The implication here is that we're going to have either learn to live with eachother or devolve into a society similar to the europeans and probably become, like them, a bunch of socialist wimps with traditions and culture and all that other garbage. We need space! It's our final frontier!
I will give everything I own and hold dear to anyone who can get me off this rock to someplace where I can be away from the rest of these jerks--even if there is significant danger of boredom! Long live NASA. Long live SETI (but not too long because it goddamned better start working soon or i'm going to have to detonate a nuclear device). Cordially, Rob
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
False. The Drake equation says the number of communicable civilizations in the galaxy is directly proportional to the amount of time we look.
Take the equation:
L is the length of time that we search. Anyone with a background up through Pre-Algebra will realize that, since all the factors are multiplied together, if any one of the other factors is equal to zero, there can still be zero communicable civilizations no matter how long we look.Furthermore, Drake did not specify a unit for the measurement of time -- and well he shouldn't, because the Drake equation isn't intended to evaluate out to an absolute answer (such as the previous posters' claim of one per year), but rather to serve as a general guideline showing the proportionality of all of these elements.
I'm not sure what point the parent post to this was trying to make nor how it got moderated up, but I do know that it is a completely misinterpretation of the Drake equation.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Faster for some problems. My understanding is that quantum computers are not Turing-equivalent, and that their stengths complement conventional computers well, but cannot replace them. Their destiny seems to be as co-processors for more general machines, with all the autonomy we've come to expect from an x87 FP unit.
I wish people would stop using the phrase 'Moore's Law'. How bout 'Moore's Trend' or 'Moorse's Estimation' I dont care. Its not a law a law is something that would continue to exist with out us. Particles would still obey the laws the govern them without us watching or defining the laws. 'Moore's Law' would mean nothing if we stop make new transitor tech or discover a drastic new way of doing it that allowed us to go from 1 billion today to 10 billion tommorrow. Sure we would be breaking 'Moore's Law' but really just beating his prediction. I think is prediction his pretty cool seeing how it is fairly close, but you do disservice to laws of the universe that cannot be broken. If a law can be broken, its not a law its an invalid theory.
Remove the spam reference to email
The biggest and most depressing limiting factor is the lifetime of a technologically advanced civilization. One might postulate that this could be as short as 20 years, given the number of times the human race has almost blown itself up.
So, it's not a matter of an extraterrestrial signal reaching Earth at all, it's a matter of it reaching Earth while we are listening. If clear radio signals had reached the Earth 1000 years ago, we would never had known. If that civilization is now extinct, we will never know.
Given the age of the universe, the time that we have been listening for radio signals is very small.
Actually, that resembles my favorite theory -- technological civilizations capable of interstellar travel abandon planets because when you have the technology to build generation ships it's more efficient to just extract what you need from a few asteroids and move on. (Also, if the aliens tend to continue established habits, which would seem to make sense in evolutionary terms as a means of preserving adaptive behaviors, they would not be interested in re-adapting to planets once they had adapted to generation ships.)
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I'm just parroting half-remembered info here. Knowing the readership around here, someone more authoritative or ambitious than me might be able to refine or refute these numbers, but I seem to remember that this was about the pace things moved at.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Just FYI, your conclusion was for a separate postulate than your intro stated. You claimed to be rebuking the notion of extraterrestrial intelligence and then went on to show that there was LIKELY not any extraterrestrian intelligence IN OUT GALAXY. These are two completely separate notions.
Also, just cause we can't detect something doesn't mean it isn't there. If we are looking for life in a galaxy 100 million light years away, there is no way to know whether life exists there or not. We can only know that no life existed there 100 million years ago, since it takes that long for info about that planet to get to us.
Either way, we haven't proved it does exist, but there is NEVER any way to prove the converse of this.
ie. You could prove God exists, if he would step down here, wave hi to everyone, work some incredible god-like voodoo magic, and then disappear. That'd be proof that he exists. However, there is NO way to prove that he doesn't exist. Anyway, i degress. I'm done.
Justin Dubs
Very good point. Thank you. I am an atheist, but I will procede anyway.
:-). Oh well. It's fun to think about regardless.
I agree that my analogy was invalid. It was merely an example to demonstrate that proving "X can't happen" or "X doesn't exist", can't be done, which I hope we both agree to be true, regardless of my flawed logic.
It could be viewed that the "theoretical model" is yours (and mine), the model that this magical universe of matter just happened to always exist, so that that matter could give rises to life via the big bang scenario. There is, of course, no evidence of where this matter came from as it was, naturally, all lost in the big bang.
The only way I can find around this argument is that of the Many Universe theory of Quantum Mechanics which says that maybe every possible universe exists at the same time and time is merely the felt effect of moving from one universe to another.
Of course, this theory, as with most of Quantum Theory, just doesn't sit well with me.
Thanks for pointing out my erring analogy though.
Justin Dubs
The "original" PIII was designed to run (and only ever did run) up to ~600 MHz. The CuMine was a die-shrink (I believe) and migrated the cache on-chip. Anyway, a die shrink increases the transistor density, though it doesn't increase the number of transistors on a chip. Obviously the on-chip cache increases the number of transistors quite a bit, though memory usually has a very high transistor density compared to a CPU because of the high regularity in layout.
The CuMine also runs at a lower voltage, and therefore lower power.
These factors combine to allow the CuMine to run at speeds higher than the 600 MHz design speed of the original PIII, which was a core revision on the PII that I believe used the same process as the 100 MHz FSB PII's (ie, the 350, 400, and 450 MHz models).
How this factors in to whether intel was trying to track Moore's law rather than make the fastest processors they could, I am not really in a position to comment. I haven't really paid attention to this much recently.
I know this was a joke, but I kind of agree with it. There are some things you can learn from books, and there are others you need to be taught. Unfortunately, our education system is moving rapidly towards teaching mostly things that can be learned from books.
It amazes me that so many people getting a CS degree take "database classes" where they learn not the theory of relational logic, nor algorithms for implementing databases, but instead SQL, the Dummy's guide to normalization (if they are lucky), and how to use JDBC to make DB backed web services.
These types of things are important, but they are all things that someone properly educated can learn from a book. What the educational system needs to do is give people a really excellent background in math, the sciences, and design theory or whatever is approrpriate in a given field. Specific applications and implementations should be viewed as test-beds to understand the abstract design concepts that underly the application.
A while ago people were making disturbing claims like "an engineering degree becomes obsolete in 5 years". Bullshit. A good engineering education should last a lifetime. Not only does a theoetical/abstract education resist obsolecense, it makes it easier for someone to change fields, or work on interdiciplinary areas of study. It gives you the background needed to learn whatever you need on your own.
Part of the problem is that universities, particularly state univiersities whose funding is dependent on the number of students enrolled go too far (IMO) torwards "treating the student as a customer." Students bitch and moan about how they don't care about calculus or physics, they want to get on to the interesting/practical stuff. And so the schools let them. Even if they don't most of it is ignored or immediately forgotten.
I could go on about what is wrong with our education system, going all the way back to kindergarden, but I have work to do...
Along these lines, you might want to check out a scientist bold enough to consider the non-3+1-dimension alternatives and attempt to explain why they wouldn't 'work' for universes containing observers. I wouldn't consider it proof, but I found it to be a cool provocative paper explaining perhaps why we have 3 spacial and 1 temporal dimension. --LP
If there's any factual errors, I can assure you that it was purely unintentional. I just took the opportunity to respond to the parent with something I remembered reading about when seti@home started which states:
u t_seti_4.html
"Multiplying all the numbers gives us N = L. In other words, the number of intelligent communicating civilizations in the galaxy equals the number of years such a civilization lasts!"
- http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/about_seti/abo
Of course when you choose the values that the seti@home team chose, you are going to come up with N=L. I apologise if I have misrepresented the equation. I must have "tuned out", even though the article says I shouldn't.
However the seti@home team are not likely to put up an article with the conclusion that the chances of finding life is zero. Not exactly in their best interest, is it?
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Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
According to the Drake equation, the number of communicable civilisations in the galaxy increases by one per year of our looking.
Explanation here
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Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
The federal government clearly can't give all of its support to Caltech and MIT. But I lean toward making the best even better. We don't want to build the infrastructure necessary to give away $100 million in $20,000 grants. We would be much more likely to look at the needs of an entire school, rather than trying to do individual projects.
:-).
I have no problem with them giving all of their support to Caltech and MIT. Split it proportional to the size of the school, MIT will get $80 million, us over here at Caltech will get $20 million, I say we just distribute it evenly among the student body. There's only about 1,000 of us, so everyone will get about 20,000
Works for me.
~Moller
Jon Katz, obviously...
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While this is true, I suspect the P3 1ghz announcement came to be in the following senario...
(Fade into Intel's Marketing Department)
Marketing Drone 1: Holy crap! AMD is set to announce their gigahertz Athlon processor. We MUST announce our own.
Marketing Drone 2: I'll call down to the engineers and see what we've got to match AMD.
(on phone)
Engineer: What?!?! We've just started making 600mhz chips. You're f-ing out of your mind!
Marketing Drone 2: But we must keep up with AMD! Can you build gigahertz processors?
Engineer: I'd estimate that about 0.5% of our current chip yield *could* make 1 gigahertz.
Marketing Drone 2: Great! I'm writing the press release right now. Get the bunny people up here!
Meanwhile back at the ranch...
Why do I think this is true? The P3 1ghz chip was very unstable compared to their other chips. They needed to write new BIOS code that disabled most of the preformance enhancing features just to get the chip to run. No, this wasn't misrepresentation, just the cold hard facts.
It doesn't work like that. SETI software has followed the same path as other software. It has grown.
There was an upgrade a few months back. We had to run it or the system would refuse to accept our results. The time taken per unit has increased by over 60%.
Your Office2000 bloatare goes at the same speed as WP51 on your old '386 doesn't it...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
In this interview Moore mention that the chief reason that more people are not entering into the technical field is that kids are not really properly introduced to it in thier pre-college years. I fully agree with this belief, but i also think it is due to some other factors. Although a nerd's status in society has greatly improved since the eighties, there still exists a stereotype that nerds(hackers, engineers...) are socially inept and romantically unatractive. This belief is instilled in most children, forever deterrering them from a deep interest in computers. To some degree of course this stereotype is true, but then again most people who have highly developed social skills and popular personalities are the ones who tend to avoid the technical fields.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
Intel "released" their 1GHz P3 in a display of the best (worst?) examples of vaporware that I can think of offhand. Even now, the production of 1GHz P3s are not as they should be.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Maybe you forget that there isn't a difference in the number of transistors in P3 600's and P3 1000's. Clock speed has nothing to do with Moores "Law".
This is of course true, and I admit that I am not an expert in this field. But what I do know is that the P3 was (is?) not properly designed to run at 1000MHz, instead it's upper limit was designed to be approx. 600-800MHz. I have been led to believe that this has something to do with the transistors, but I could be wrong. Apologies if so.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Can you elaborate in more detail on what you mean?
.13 micron process is ready).
What I mean is: the P3 has clearly capped out as is, and Intel is not going to push it any further than it has already done (consider that they are shipping the P4 before it's fully ready for prime-time, which should be in a few months when the
(I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious to see which website you'll cut and paste from to explain something you clearly have no clue about beyond quoting a bullet point or two)
Asshole. I've been following the AMD vs. Intel struggles for 3 years as a consumer, investor, and enthusiast. FYI, if I were to cut-n-past, it would likely be from The Register or from Tom's Hardware. I'll let you look up articles yourself... And I put my money where my mouth is: following the news I bought AMD options heavy and am up over 200% this year so far, so I am not just some uninformed yahoo. I admit, and have admitted in the post you replied to, that I am not an expert in the field... but that gives you no right to say that I "clearly have no clue" simply because you insinuate that you have a clue without demonstrating it.
yerricde, who replied to you, explained it nicely so I won't bother again, since others understand it better that I. What I do "have a clue" about, is that Intel was caught with their pants down because they figured that Moore's Law would be predictable and they geared the company, from R&D to Fabrication, around that flawed principle.
apologies, I was drinking and watching The Sopranos... that's why this reads as a rant more than I mean it.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Intel became brainwashed into thinking that Moore's Law was an actual law, instead of a generally observed trend over the past several years. Yes, it has been quite a sustained trend, but still... not a Law in the sense of a proper Law.
Intel's problem was that they built their company around this "Law" and were surprised when little AMD didn't seem to care that they were going ahead of Moore's schedule! And Intel had so many plants around the world that it is taking them until now to upgrade them to the point where they should have been a long time ago to maintain technological leadership.
I remember reading last year that when AMD was beating the pants off of them with the 1G Athlon, Intel was still revved for producing P3-600's, more in line with Moore's law.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
But when the system is constructed with thousands of individual PCs, which get upgraded anyway every few years, the entire computer gets a speed boost without having to be completely redesigned and rebuilt. I'd be curious to see how well the speed increase of SETI@home has matched Moore's Law over the two years since its conception, I bet it is pretty close.
Intel actually _shipped_ 1 GHz parts before AMD did. AMD announced first, and shipped in quantity first, but Intel _shipped_ first. Of course quibbling over something that was two days apart is moot. It was AMD's press release at the time which compared the first GHz processor release to the first transatlantic flight. Right, Jerry, whatever you say.
He's still worth $4.99995 BILLION more than me.
In my books, that's not equal.
Maybe their prime directive doesn't allow them to interact with us yet.
SETI@home isn't looking for communication.
oR MAYBE I've been watching too much of Star trek
Try Star Wars, as in SDI and Son of SDI. SETI is looking for signals with strong carriers such as military radar.
Will I retire or break 10K?
the P3 was (is?) not properly designed to run at 1000MHz, instead it's upper limit was designed to be approx. 600-800MHz. I have been led to believe that this has something to do with the transistors
Explanation: As the CPU fabrication[0] process shrinks, transistors and other components become smaller ergo have less capacitance ergo run faster. Another explanation: Between the initial design of the P6 core and its use in later PIII processors, it was optimized to have a shorter critical path ergo a shorter cycle time.
[0] Fabrication in AMD's case refers to manufacturing. In Intel's case, it refers to falsehoods such as "P4 is faster than its largest competitor (i.e. Athlon)."Will I retire or break 10K?
The cheapest laptops have been around $1000 forever now. When can I buy one for $500?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Read the replies scored 0 then ask that question aloud once more
You can't read at threshold=0 if Slashdot is in Overload mode and is serving only static pages at threshold=1. Any attempt to change /article.pl's threshold or to get /comments.pl at all redirects you to the homepage.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Kyoto was not a good treaty.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
I have unable to find a way around the following conclusion: I think that one of the fundamental principles that has allowed the human species to become dominant on Earth is their competitive nature. I think it's not a stretch to say that within the confines of the theory of evolution, a species MUST have a competitive nature to become dominant, and thereafter (thereby?) intellegent. Independently, as an intellegent species progresses, the difficulty with which an group of people of given size can destroy the entire population decreases. (At first only one country has nukes, then more countries, then large terrorist groups... etc.) Eventually a very small group of people (one person?) has the power to do so. Refer again to the fact that any such intellegent species must be competitive in nature, and you might say that after a certain level of technological advancement, it's increasingly likely, and ultimately inevitable that the species will destroy itself. This is not necessarily applicable to only nuclear weapons and the like. Indeed, destructive effects of technology (greenhouse?) might not even NEED a competitive impetus to set them off. If this is a fundamental law of intellegent species, they could be quickly flurishing to the electronic age or just past, and then flashing out... all over the universe. This explains why well reasoned arguments call for intellegent life elsewhere, but it's not to be found (by us). How can we avoid it? - increase the difficulty for destructive technology to destroy all of us (move to more planets, etc.)? - social constraints against allowing small groups to control such technology (I think we know better, eh?) - advance technologies? - - - I don't think any of these is really a good answer, but would like to find one, because I don't like the outcome!
The whole thing of course boils down to the nature vs nurture debate, which I'm afraid we're not going to settle on slashdot. That said, I'm not buying the argument that peer pressure is keeping kids from becoming technologists. If the urge is there (and most of us around here probably recognize that urge), it won't be repressed. Worst would be that a kid becomes a closet technologist, but the True Calling will come out one day.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
No, it just means that when the invasion comes, the E.T's will enjoy playing Quake all that more.
Christan
where's the "Whoa! Slow Down" category in the mod system?
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This
As anyone who might delve into pyramid schemes or beowulf clusters will tell you, it's not the speed of the individual processors that counts, its how many processors you have working for you...
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Bill Gates gives tons but not 50%. Also the ability to acquire enormous wealth today has substantialy altered things. you present good points - just adding. On another note, I really do commend Gates' choice of charities: childrens' health and well-being. da captain
Captain Ober
We could debate Bush's politics or lack of any sense but what would that do? What seems a bit odd is how Moore applauds Bush for what he hasn't done. Re: Not repealing Clintons presidential dictates. How can we expect any progress with such low expectations. This is how W. has made a life. What a pity for all of us. People like Moore have and should help us slower folk empower ourselves with higher expectations. Piece, Captain Ober
Captain Ober
The laws that govern particles would not exist without the particles...
P226
I thought that Moore's law meant that anything that could go wrong would go wrong...
Oh wait...that's Murphy's Law My bad...
The anti-salmon
Actually, you would. While Microsoft may be a predatory company, Bill has given away shitloads of money in the last few years. Remember when Ted Turner made a big deal about his $1 billion donation to the UN? Bill has been giving away a hell of a lot more than that. A recent story on 60 Minutes or Dateline or something estimated that Bill has already given away more money than Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt combined AND adjusted for inflation!
Say intelligent life is rare and occurs at a rate of only 1 out of 2 galaxeys or 1 out of a million. At any rate we have little hope of communicating with them,and with the speed of light delay they could have a galaxy spanning civilization and all we see is a dead galaxy.
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
Easy... they're all living Beyond the Rim.
Sorry, some lame Babylon 5 humor. I'll shut up now.
How about someone with a consistent track record of predicting, in detail, many ovents of the future which have come to pass as he predicted them?
;-) )
I'm thinking of the person who predicted communications satelites in such detail that when the first real ones were developed decades later, his prior art prevented them from patenting the communication satelite! (Should earn him some slashdot bonus points
I am, of course, referring to none other than Sir Arthur C Clarke.
--
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
When will you learn anything?
The speed of light is 300 000 km/sec.
Miles, foots, inches... interesting only if your studying ancient history!
A "pleasure-driven intelligence", uh?
This is sad. One's only criteria is expansion and imperialism, the other's is pleasure, and both are insightful and no one counters what they say. Is this what life is for all of you?
Conquering doesn't bring pleasure; pleasure doesn't bring happiness.
Look at what single-issue politics, capitalism, mass media and corporate/state schooling (brainwashing) has done to you, the individual and us, the society.
There is no society without individuals and there is no individual without society. Interact with each other, find love, be passionate, get to know nature, Mother Earth.
Humans are social animals. As such, the only way one can achieve individual freedom is by developing equal-to-equal relationships. You cannot be free if you are subordinate to someone.
We are all brothers and sisters. We are not in competition. This is simply what the ruling class needs us to think so we don't unite and say we want freedom.
Do you really believe you are free right now? Do you really believe you are happy? Do you think you'll find happiness in money, luxury or "perfect nano-technology virtual worlds"?
Evolve. Revolt. Before it's too late. Because they are destroying our planet and the future of our children.
Form affinity groups, support each other, debate issues, form an ideology, ACT.
www.nefac.org
Woa, you not offended me at all, but seem offended ;-)
The speed of light is obvious, but I, as a very large portion of the net and probably slashdot crowd don't the size of some dead king's foot.
The point of my post is that the metric system is simple, international and, most importantly, logical, that's all.
The kyoto accord is more like the landmine treaty.
-It starts with a good idea
-They come up with some reasonable ideas
-They come up with some unrealistic ideas
-They forget to take into account the special circumstances of some countries
-They make it a moral crusade and will not bend the rules
-The treaty doesn't make it or is completely useless
-They blame the US
With the landmine treaty they would not let the US have a 5 year extention in korea, so it wasn't signed, now the US is not at all part of the treaty and its completely useless. This can be blamed on Canadian Cabinet minister Allen Rock and his nobel prize dreams. It didn't happen.
The treaty hurts the US and Austrailia far more than the other countries, that is why they do not want to sign it.
And Bill Gates is leaving almost all of his fortune to charities, giving his children something like 10 million.
Nope it depends soley on the speed of light, the distance between them and us, how fast they developed, and of course if they exist.
Well I think its a good chance they may be out there, considering the size of the universe, the development time and the finite speed of light its unlikely SETI will ever show us anything. But while I don't think NASA should be funding it, I think that it is an interesting project that should be.
Why not?? We're not the Borg, alot of progress comes from individuals and small groups pursuing their own ideas. We already have foundations giving large money to a few schools .. why not one that's willing to give small funding to a large number of projects? -- Bitmanhome
Why not? Because giving away small chunks of money in public programs ALWAYS gets screwed up, and leads to horrible graft, corruption, waste, etc. There's a SMALL chance that you can give big chunks away fairly, because enough people will pay attention to the details. But there's NO chance that you could give $100M in $20K grants without funding a lot of brothers-in-law of polticians and cheeseball con artists. Remember when Nixon declared war on cancer? (Probably not, but I do.) All of a sudden, all my friends in legit cancer research had a HARDER time getting funding, because the influx of funds drew a lot of professional grantsmen who knew how to work the system with stupid 'sound bite' projects. There was a chilling effect on good research. It's the same process.
Try to keep the public sector out of things that are both complicated and important. If they have to be involved, make sure it's at a simple and high-enough level that nobody can make too much of a profit by working the system.
JMHO -- Trevor
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
Moore's comments on the education system in america strike home with me preety hard.
You almost cannot learn what you need as a base for a technical career in a average school enviroment. With all the cut backs and distractions in schools these days the future geek of america are gonna keep sucking as a majority of those working in the industry right now. How many of us know a moron working as an admin? Heh how many of us are morons?
once again we can see america getting flushed, and as far as I'm concerned at this point, we deserve it.
Guttermouth is a really good band.
Er... Well, y'know. You can't make an omelette without um... destroying a forest. Or something.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Does anyone know the text and source (e.g. magazine) of the original, 1965, Moore's Law?
Its not when ( and if ) we find them. It's when they choose to show themselves to us. Maybe we haven't reached a sufficient stage of evolution or technological developement yet. Maybe their prime directive doesn't allow them to interact with us yet. oR MAYBE I've been watching too much of Star trek
The duality weakens
I don't like to nitpick an otherwise great argument (but I'm going to). That's not quite a valid analogy. In the case of E.T. life, we already have an instance of life that is known to exist on a planet. Ours. Since there are many similar stars, and we can presume many similar planets (and soon we may be able to prove their existence), it is therefore at least within the realm of possibility that E.T. life can exist. There is a theoretical mechanism for planetary formation, and a theoretical mechanism for the formation of life, and their validity can and has been tested.
On the other hand, God currently holds the status of an imaginary abstraction, and no known observable example of this type of entity is available. No theoretical model exists of a supreme being, and no test can be made nor conclusion drawn from his existence or lack thereof. It's not possible to prove his nonexistence, but it's really not necessary either. It would be more likely if someone could prove that an intelligent creator was required to exist as an antecedent to the existence of the universe, but as yet no one has done that to my knowledge.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Probability that alien broadcasts of some sort are striking the earth during the present era and are theoretically detectable: p0 Amount of radio data available for analysis in a fully comprehensive search with no limits to the computing power thrown at the problem: N bits per year
Amount of data analyzable with current computing power: r bits per year
Therefore probability of detection is p=p0*(r/N).
If r doubles, then p doubles (unless r approaches N. Therefore, assuming that r/N is small, Moore's Law says that the probability of detection doubles every 18 months. Duh. This is like saying if 20 million people download SETI@home this year instead of 10 million, the chance of detecting ET doubles. Similarly, if I buy two lottery tickets instead of one, my chance of winning the lottery doubles.
The more important term is p0. It is probably smaller than r/N.
This is the kind of statement people make when they just look at a plot of points on a graph and make bland predictions without thinking through the physical reality behind the data.
Things larger than insects are easier to make than things smaller than atoms. The same trends will not necessarily apply just because silicon wasn't used in early computers.
It's refreshing to see someone share the wealth like Gordon Moore does. These days, it seems that the accountants decide the fate of speculative research--How silly, especially when nearly all revolutionizing discoveries throughout history were due to sheer accidents or wacked-out ideas. Open letter to all you *illionaires: you can't take it with you!
I think /. should interview him. I would like to find out what he thinks about psychedelics.
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
I think it would be cool to give $5,000-20,000 grants to masters and doctorate students to finish their research, and make something useful out of it. If other people find it useful, then a company can buy it and market it. With $100 mil to give away, they can certainly afford the infrastructure.
Hmm .. I seem to remember this topic being discussed before (hasn't everything?) but I can't seem to find it..
-B
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Great guys, ;-)
You just go on justifying people because they're rich & famous. For you, it seems that rich&famous=smart&respetable.
I'm not so sure.
Bush's links with oil companies are *obvious*, and his environmental record to date is awful.
I understand you americans need to like your leaders, but failing to criticise them, you are failing your most basic citizen's duties.
And please, no talk about *realism*. You know changes can be made, and they have to be made.
I don't see why I should respect Moore's words like a sacred text--I respect his achievements (i.e. I like my PC) and possibly him as a person (for having achieved what he has: you see, I don't know him personally.)
But, as geeks, I don't expect you to know too much about the environment
--
yours ever, fz.
Weired, this Mooore.
He donates half of his Intel shares ($5 Billion) to environmental & educational programs, and on the other hand he sat on Bush's environmental advisory committee and does not even criticise the guy...(and we all know what Bush has done to the environment, including getting rid of the Kyoto agreements and licking every oil company's arse.)
I suppose he's just confused.
Still, I kind of like the guy giving away 50% of his fortune (wouldn't see old $Bill doing that!)
--
yours ever, fz.
A small probability in 10^22 may be big as far a the probability of the existence of E.T. but it's still amounts to a very small probability of finding E.T. among 10^22 star systems.
Mod me down because of my sig.
Thou shalt take care to monopolize the microprocessor market by committing abominable whoredoms with the company that has the operating system monopoly.
[This will insure that, even if Moore's law breaks down in the future, you can still clobber your competitors. And the other companies in the land will fear you. And you shall be the head and not the tail.]
So I says: "Ociffer, if a law can be broken, it's not a law, it's an invalid theory. {Burp}".
IIRC, it was part of an economic analysis Moore did as general manager of the semiconductor business unit at Fairchild.
--Blair
I think people generally forget that "Moore's Law" was an off the cuff optimistic guess made in an interview with Electronics Magazine in 1965. He was pretty lucky with his guess, which has held generally true for the last 35 years. The guess of exponential growth fit in really nicely with the growing industry, and emergence of the microchip in everyday life. Greater demand meant greater research, and lower prices, spurring even greater demand. However, I see a set of different factors greatly slowing that cycle. First, as Moore said in the interview, the limits of the medium. Sub-atomic transistors are still pretty far on the horizon, and our current designs can't get much smaller. Second, a factor Moore didn't mention, the eventual market saturation. There is no radical new application on the horizon for the microchip to cause its continued spread at such a great rate. Sure, we all like to get faster, and faster computers, but most people already have somthing that works. Unless a new market opens, investment will slow, as will research, and the entire cycle will slow.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
So more made a law.... then he changed it... now he's changed it again (but, made it so the law changes on it's own?) [intresting idea]
so.... This is how it goes
It every 2 years the number of tranistors in chips will double
Every 10 years that number (e.g. 2) will double.
Every 15 years Moore will change his law again.
--- My Karma is bigger than your...
------ This sentence no verb
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
(Ok, so Contact affected me in more ways than one :)
On a more sci-fi note, how exactly do you think spaceships will communicate? I'd sure hope not by 5,000,000 miles of cat5 :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
No, it just means our frustration with the absence of intelligent life on THIS planet doubles every two years. :o)
Sorry. Didn't you read the fine print?
"Past performance is not a guarantee of future results."
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I am sorry If I have offended you, but I used English measurement because a large portion of Slashdot's readers are from the United States (and some from Great Britain). As you did not know, I am quite a supporter for the metric system... but I won't post with it for the sake of readers. Since you can obviously convert the distance (or know common distances), I do not see the point in your post.
Elmo knows where you live!
You have a very good point. Double the processing power= double the amount of ETI reports we can go through, but there is another law that will keep the chances low: lightspeed. 186,282 Miles Per Second. The closest star is 4.3 light years... 8.6 years for a round trip. Then you take the chances of a planet existing around Alpha Centauri (low), take the chances that the planet orbits in the life zone (which is relatively thin), then take the chances that life would evolve, then take the chances that the life would become intelligent, then take the chances that that intelligent life would live long enough to develop radio, then take the chances that the ETI would be seaching the particular radio band we are broadcasting on... and so on. Then apply that for planets thousands or millions of lightyears away, and you see that processing speed is but a minor factor in the search for ETI. As I said, you did bring up a good point, though.
Elmo knows where you live!
This article says that the Moore's Law says the number of transistors will double every two years. I always heard it was every 18 months.
Tyler
If the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years, does that mean that our chances of finding extraterrestrial life also double every two years?
Tyler
The number of idiots using computers is directly proportionate to the number of AOL CDs
TODO: Something witty here...
If you look back to the early days of computer development (circa 1940s) to current technology and extrapolate the amount of computing cycles/$1000 ---- You will find that Moore's Law holds even before silicon. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Moore's Law will hold even after we have reached the limits of silicon technology (predicted within the next 15 years).
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine drawn beyond the lines of reason. Push the envelope. Watch it bend.
There is no radical new application on the horizon for the microchip to cause its continued spread at such a great rate.
The converse of Moore's law is that a constant amount of computing power gets drastically cheaper with time. Perhaps there isn't much market for a 10 GHz microprocessor, but there is probably a market for a 150 MHz Pentium-equivalent microcontroller, if one could be had for $20 or less. For the immediate future, Moore's law means proliferation of computers, not necessarily dramatic new technology.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
The great physicist Enrico Fermi raised the following objection to the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (as distinct from extraterrestrial life):
It should take about 1-10 million years for an intelligent race to colonize a space the size of our galaxy, even without faster-than-light travel. (The argument is exponential - we form n colonies, then they form n colonies each, and so on.) Since this is a tiny fraction of the age of the galaxy, there should be evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence everywhere. So, where is everybody?
One could say that perhaps other forms of intelligent life dislike exploration, or that they don't interfere in the affairs of other civilizations, or that they leave no trace of their presence. But the one data point we have (humanity) is keen on exploration, isn't shy at all about interfering in the affairs of others, and is pretty bad at cleaning up after itself.
This is being accepted by a growing number of SETI researchers, who believe (somewhat controversially) that humanity is the most advanced form of life in our own galaxy, at least.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Perhaps, once a civilization reaches a high enough level of development, its citizens become satisfied and cease interacting with the universe, like an enlightened yogi disappearing into his own navel.
In our case, this is happening with automated production and escapist entertainment. Once we have nanotechnology and perfect virtual reality, we will be able to trick ourselves into eternal happiness, and won't want to bother with anything else.
Any pleasure-driven intelligence which learns to satisfy its survival needs without effort will eventually just turn on its pleasure center and live in perfect contentment.
Not that it really makes a difference. They may be out there, but they don't want to be bothered.
--
Uhm, let's say that the probability is 10^-27, that would make the product 10^-5.
Not my impression of "pretty big". People will never understand the meaning of "never".
The behavior of the rich in this country and others is apalling. I come from a wealthy family, but we give a boatload of money to charity and support conservation efforts. We voted against Bush. Whenever I here of the horrors of the, "Death Tax," I cringe. They talk about how unfair it is and I almost laugh; they forget about the impoverished masses abroad and at home and try to get rid of a tax who's only purpose is to slightly redistribute wealth. Moore on the other hand, just gave away half of his fortune to fund research at universities and conservation efforts. What a guy! I wish more of the upper class had the same view on life as he has. A lot of the posts on this thread were Moore bashing and after reading that article I don't see how any liberal/radical (and that is what I'm guessing those who hate Intel based on its monopoly are) could still harbor some strong disliking against him. Moore cares about many of the issues I care about. Remember, Intel may be a monopoly now (for all intents and purposes) but it wasn't always. They rose to the top because they had the best products at the time. No matter what your thoughts on Intel now try to have some respect for Moore as a rich man who cares about important things that are ignored by the government. As for his involvement in the Bush campaign (and I _hate_ Bush), the best way to change an organization is from within it. (Especially when the leader needs to be thought for:)
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Can you elaborate in more detail on what you mean?
(I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious to see which website you'll cut and paste from to explain something you clearly have no clue about beyond quoting a bullet point or two)
The first of these is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This states that you cannot know both the location AND velocity of a sub atomic particle (protons and on down). Stated otherwise, you cannot measure its location without changing its velocity, and vice versa. Or, you cannot separate the observer from the observed. For example, if you wanted to bounce a photon of light off of a proton so you could "see" it, the photon would have to have an extremely small wavelentgh (smaller than the diameter of the proton). This means that the photon would carry a lot of angular momentum, and when said photon collides with the proton, path of the photon would change, but SO WOULD THE PROTON - and there is no way of knowing in what way that path changed. The upshot of this is that you can never accurately predict what a particle will be doing at a given location. This is why electron orbitals are represented as probability clouds (in actual physics labs) as opposed to the more popular "solar system" model.
What the HUP means as far as processors go is that there has to be a reliable way of controlling (starting, stopping, redirecting, DETECTING) super small particles for it to work. As of right now, even in theory, we have no way of doing that.
Near as I can tell, being a failed physics major, the only way we'll get quantum computers is when we finally crack the GUT's and String Theory (the reconcilliatioin of newtonian and quantum mechanics). Albert Einstein, Steve Weinberg, Richard Feynman, and Steven Hawking have all been stumped by this problem. In fact, Einstein compared it to the biblical "thorn in the chest" because he felt his theories were incomplete while that problem existed.
You know what's even more incredible? More than likely, FTL (faster-than-light) computers are closer. I think that's another post, though.
When nuance becomes the only objective we lose the ability to function
"Even a small probability multiplied by 10^22 gets pretty big."
If only common people understood such things. Be it the chance of two hydrogen atoms fusing in the sun, or the emergence of a technological world...
I remember reading last year that when AMD was beating the pants off of them with the 1G Athlon, Intel was still revved for producing P3-600's, more in line with Moore's law.
Maybe you forget that there isn't a difference in the number of transistors in P3 600's and P3 1000's. Clock speed has nothing to do with Moores "Law".