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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?
Linux user since early January 1992.
My cock is bigger than your cock.
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 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.
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...
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.
--
"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...