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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."

25 of 257 comments (clear)

  1. Be fast by Rei · · Score: 4, Funny

    Better get them a copy quickly - in a year and a half, the reward goes down to 5,000$, then 2,500$ another year and a half later....

    --
    Margaret Thatcher died the other day. It was a sad day, but I like to think that she's looking up at us right now."
  2. Well... by Sottilde · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's the last time I use old science magazines to start a fire...

  3. You can have my copy... by Cylix · · Score: 4, Funny

    When you pry it from my cold dead hands.

    --
    "You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
    1. Re:You can have my copy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Your proposal is acceptable.

  4. Count me in, but... by AtariAmarok · · Score: 5, Funny

    Count me in, if you make it worth my while: Double the prize every 18 months.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  5. Unfourtunately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thanks to his evil brother's law (Murphy), everything that could go wrong has, and there are no copies left in existence...

    1. Re:Unfourtunately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
      This is actually an evil plot. Intel has secretly laid plans to purchase every copy of this magazine known to be in existance. Years from now, when Moore's Law breaks down, critics everywhere will proclaim "Moore was a moron! He didn't know at all what he was talking about."

      And Intel, being the snide company, will simply ask: "And what law would you be referring to? Provide us with evidence, please."

      Only no evidence will exist, besides that which is safely locked away in the Intel safe.

      Evil, I say... plain 'ol evil.

  6. Re:Moore's Law by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

  7. I got Gordon's copy by xbytor · · Score: 4, Funny

    But the price just doubled.

  8. it's just words - they want to be free! by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Funny

    of your own, not stolen from a museum or library

    I believe the local vernacular is "shared."

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  9. Bargain ? by shashark · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When ordinary memorabilia auctions (baseballs fetching more than $10k) at much more, $10k would be a pretty small sum to pay for this original copy.

    If it's a unique copy, this could be worth much more. And the price will rise as the time progresses.
    --
    All your magazines are belong to us.

  10. Warning - Buyer Feedback score of zero by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is it safe to do business with Intel on Ebay ?

  11. eBay feedback by tuxedobob · · Score: 5, Funny

    They've got a feedback score of 0. I'm not so sure I'd want to sell to them...

  12. MOD PARENT DOWN by the+pickle · · Score: 4, Informative

    From the auction description:

    This auction is for a digital copy of the above magazine article, including the issue cover and credits page. This is a MINT CONDITION copy because it has been fully restored digitally and available in Adobe PDF format. All raster graphics have been restored and saved at 300 dpi for quality reproduction.

    In other words, the person is selling a copyright violation. Methinks eBay would love to know about that.

    p

  13. It's not a law! by Jon_Hanson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wish people would stop calling Moore's Law a law. Laws don't have the word "about" in them ("transistor counts double about every 18 months"). It should be called "Moore's Observation" or "Moore's Conjecture."

    In physics, do we say that force is about equal to mass times acceleration?

  14. AMD vs Intel by jwymanm · · Score: 4, Funny

    It'd be funny to see if someone did post an auction for the magazine and AMD and Intel got in a bidding war. Possibly even funnier if IBM came along and took it right out from under both of them.

  15. Re:Oh no... by Slashdolt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, you are 64 years old now... Perhaps it's time you moved out...

  16. Re:Moore's Law by mondoterrifico · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  17. Re:Moore's Law by ediron2 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

    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...

  18. "Moore's Law" a Misnomer by rinkjustice · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some interesting facts I gleened from an article written by Tom R. Halfhill, an analyst for Microprocessor Report.

    Fact #1: More's Law is not a scientific law, but and only an observation describing semiconductors pace of progress.

    Fact #2: Intel cofounder Dr.Gordon E. Moore did not define Moore's law as it is understood today. He didn't even call it a "law" in the original article. Somebody else much later coined the now famous term.

    Fact #3: Moore's law was never about processor clock frequency or other performance issues. Rather, it regards the economic manufacturing of component integration on integrated circuits.

    Fact #4: Moore's law actually stated component integration doubles every 12 months - not 18 - and he actually ammended this prediction to 24 months. 18 months is a number seemingly drawn from a hat.

    Fact #5: Moore's law is extremely inaccurate. Tom Halfhill estimates todays chips would have more than 27 trillion transistors, when in reality Intel's Prescott Pentium sports 169 million transistors.

  19. Let's think this through... by RobertKozak · · Score: 5, Funny


    Let's say that I did have a copy of this magazine. I would expect to be paid for it based on Moore's Law. Its only fitting. So with that in mind, let's see how much it woiuld be:

    Magazine came out 40 years ago. Moore's Law says it doubles every 18 months. That's 26.6 doublings. Let's take 26 to make it easy. So thats 2^26 of the price.

    I could not find what the cover price was but let's be fair and say $0.10 (10 cents). So thats 2^26 * 10 / 100 = $6,710,886.40. Thats a good deal more than the $10,000.00 they are offering.

    I think its a rip-off.

    BTW: here is a link to the original article in PDF format.

    --
    Bet this .sig looks familiar.
  20. Re:Sounds Fishy to me... by zakezuke · · Score: 5, Interesting

    1) subscribe to all magazines
    2) Rent a warehouse to keep them
    3) ???
    4) Profit!!!!


    There was a man by the name of Mike Myers(sp) in San Jose who worked out a deal with comic book companies to buy their surplus stock from warehouses, have them shipped to him via train, which he then in turn bagged, stuck a 99cent for 3 label on them, and sold them to discount chains such as Walmart. This upset collectors greatly as mint condition previously uncirculated issues of rare comics started to flood the market, all available to those willing to sort through the bargain bins. Eventually he started putting stickers on them denoting them as being surplus rather than collectible, but still maintained a store front which I presume contained some gems found by the employees as they were bagging 3 for 99cent comics. He was making enough money off the 3 for 99cent deal he wasn't worried anything rare or valueable.

    Needless to say your business model is actually a somewhat valid one, but chances are there already is a warehouse filled with crap that you could buy cheaply if you are willing to take the time, or if you prefer sell at walmart for 99cents a bag.

    --
    There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
  21. actually... by 0x20 · · Score: 4, Informative

    In the 1960s, most large computers were used on a timeshare basis. In many instances, if you wanted calculations done, you bought blocks of "computer time" by the minute. Thus, twice the computing power would = half the cost. Therefore something that cost $10000 one year should only cost $5000 the next year (when the computer was twice as fast), etc.

  22. Hello, Plagiarist by Saeger · · Score: 5, Informative
    Thanks for copy/pasting my exact +5 post from a few days ago w/o attribution.

    The funny thing is that I'd be midly angry if it were any other post you copied, but Singularity awareness must increase by any means...

    --
    Power to the Peaceful
  23. Wonder Why... by djinn2020 · · Score: 4, Funny
    Why would Intel want a copy of this law? New ad campaign?

    Moore stated that computing power would double every 18 months... his estimations were a tad slow -- introducing the new P6!!! released just 5 months after the P5 and over twice as fast *at over 4 times the cost*

    Buy it now at Dell.com!

    --
    Mens et Manus