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Intel Seeking Moore's Law Original Publication
ackthpt writes "Gordon Moore's famous prediction, labeled Moore's Law, was originally published in the April 19, 1965 issued of Electronics. Sometime since, he lent out his copy and it has never been returned. Intel would like an original copy of the now defunct magazine and is offering $10,000 for a copy, presumably in good condition. The story is carried on Reuters, and if you happen to have a copy (of your own, not stolen from a museum or library) you may contact Intel via eBay's WantItNow."
...it's unfortunately become a driving marketing factor for the industry...
...people realize they don't really need more than a 1Ghz to surf the web, send pictures, and listen to music...
...Moore's Law was coming to an end based on simple technical limitations...
Huh? These three points don't mesh at all. A driving marketing factor -> people don't need that much power -> but it doesn't matter because it's coming to an end.
If you can't imagine the use for more processing power, then you're not very imaginative.
Processing power is a remarkable thing - you're talking about 1Ghz as being a pedestrian, adequate level of computing, yet you in a prior life (or rather prior year), back in 2001, were undoubtedly saying "Oh who'd need these crazy 1Ghz processors? A 300Mhz is all anyone would ever need...". Even the luddites somehow pull their requirements forward to be just behind the curve, and I've been hearing the same "who needs more than X" mantra quite seriously since the 386 days. Some people never learn from history though.
They might be marketing driven, but on the other hand the processing power nowadays really extends computers. Use hardware from '95 and you'll soon realize that you can't listen to mp3s in real time or that you can't encode some video within a week. I guess that we all agree that every modern computer mostly wastes its cycles, but sometimes it's rather handy to have that extra power at your fingertips.
If they need some stupid "law" to follow it's allright to me.
There is just one thing that bugs me since years: That every new gerneration of chips consumes more power in order to fulfill Moore's prophecy. But I guess we can only blame the consumers in this case.
I don't read replies by ACs.
I agree with you to a point, but in 2001, I was never saying 300mhz was all anyone would need. Applications like Office were still slow and memory-hungry. Booting up Windows was a minute-long affair.
That has changed. 512MB of RAM and 1Ghz are a very common baseline now. Office runs just fine on it. E-mail clients run just fine. Web browsing has never really been a system-hungry activity. Gamers are a special niche; most computer users have no need now for more than 512MB of RAM and 1Ghz.
Honestly, can you tell me what they'd need more for if all they're going to do is type documents, send pictures, and surf the web? A friend of mine is still running his 800mhz Powerbook at work with 128MB of RAM with no complaints.
Look at it this way. Cars used to be really slow, and you had to hand-crank them. They got faster and faster and more practical with each decade. Now you could build a car that could go 500mph, but nobody needs it except race car drivers. The only thing that's really changed with cars is more efficient fuel consumption and various niceties like stereo systems and computer navigation. And yet, I'm still getting along with my car made in 1993. Before that, a car made in 1984. A friend of mine still drives a 1960s pickup truck. He simply doesn't need more than that.
I think computers have hit that plateau. I also think that's part of the motivation behind rearchitecturing all of Windows Longhorn so that it's all "managed" and requires an extra layer and more hardware resources to run it all, and therefore a new computer purchase much to Intel's delight. In the Apple world, Mac users hang on to their machines longer because they're not living in a Moore's Law-inspired annual PC upgrade cycle that takes your money every year.
Just my $0.02.
Moore's Law has "nothing" to do with clockspeed?
Moore's law describes component integration on integrated circuits that are economical to manufacture. This results in, among other things, increased processor speed. Generally speaking, Moore's Law has been adopted as an observation on general computing power.
This is like the people who desperately argue that "hacker" originally meant something else, and that we should all use "cracker" instead. You and I know what we're all referring to, so the argument is just a nuisance.
Has clockspeed doubled in the last 18 months? No, not even close.
Will it continue to ramp up as it has in the past. Probably not.
Has the number of transistors doubled every 18 months? Yes and it will continue to do so for awhile yet. Moore's Law is valid and will be valid even if there is no clockspeed increase, until we stop doubling transistor counts. You make the mistake in directly tying increases in performance to increase in clockspeed, which is a an oversimplification of what goes on in a cpu.
As to what the average person calls something I could care less, Moore's Law has always pertained to transistor counts.
Performance isn't tied down to clockspeed.
They're not the cutting edge. Hell, I'm not, but I see a need for speed because of: mp3's, video-on-demand, podcasting, voice-recognition, rippin' dvd's, capturing TV (myth, xptv, or whatever), centralized media and multiple remote players, kids doing homemade animation, gaming, backups, making backups of dvds so the 2-year-old doesn't destroy the original, advanced video processing, sound editing, home photography archives...
Nah, I don't need a gigabit net, firewire, raid or fast computers. This here 1-mhz Altair, wordstar, and 8" floppies will do me just fine. Together with a daisy-wheel, I can do all the writing I want. Really.
Still to come: videophones, real-time avatars, bespoke animation/video, more on-demand video/audio (including education and games), always-on videoconference ability, trivial offsite backups/redundancy, depth-of-field or other non-video data added to video feeds, any-to-any video feeds (think n-megapixel streaming cameraphone), realtime data analysis on problems that currently are out of reach, even broader upheavals between mainstream-media and blogs/indy musicians, etc.
Every time you give me more power, I'll find problems worth solving and places to use it. I used to slip a digit in some finite element work and take puzzles from 40-hrs of cpu time to unsolvable. Given a few more years, my old work will be running at 30 frames a second.
Right now, a pic of the Power5 chip is pinned to my wall: 8 cpu cores, 4 mmus, 144mb cache, one chip/die. Ads say this baby scales up to 16-ways for 128 cpus possible, at 2ghz. I say it's just a good start...
This is a concept I am going to try and explain in simple and eloquent terms that even the most humorless slashdotter can understand. I know, being a crowd of logically minded folk the responses tend to be well thought out and analyzed from every angle to ensure that nothing but the highest quality ideas and posts make it to this site. With that in mind, I do believe the original poster was attempting this odd thing known as 'humor' This is an act where one makes a statement that is very outlandish and silly. It is typically an attempt to make others 'laugh' or 'smile'.
Well then. I feel better now.
Jeremy