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Gordon Moore: Moore's Law is Dead
Golygydd Max writes "Moore's Law will not hold forever, claims Gordon Moore.
In a Techworld article, he points out the limitations of the law, in particular, the limitations as we approach the size of atoms.
He helpfully explains, however, that the law will hold for a few years yet." Still, sticking around for forty years is pretty impressive.
Don't you mean: Gordon Moore: Moore's Law is still alive
He helpfully explains, however, that the law will hold for a few years yet.
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Who is the Gordon fellow? He thinks he is soooo smart that he can comment on the already tried and true Moore's Law.
I'll tell ya, the nerve of some people, sheesh.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
still reign supreme. Godwin's, in particular.
(Probably going to get modded down by nazi mods)
Never confuse volume with power.
as an excuse for a lack of innovation?
"we have reached the limits so don't expect innovation!"
You know, seems to me that as long as I can remember using computers, people have been saying Moore's law can't hold out forever. And, while, I guess, logically, that has to be true, it seems to be out-living most of these predictions. A lot like Apple and FreeBSD :-)
+Pete
Score:-1, Funny
Oh, well, it's been pronounced dead more often than BSD on Slashdot, so it actually means very little. Even coming from Gordon Moore.
John
Meanwhile I suspect that the number of articles saying Moore's law can't go on forever will double every month on /. starting now.
it may well buy a couple gallons of gas
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
People are clever. They figure out ways to do things that seem impossible. While the physical laws of the atom will be a barrier, I have faith that we will work around them (so to speak). Perhaps getting atoms to do multiple things at once (who knows). But don't bet against a breakthough with economic gain at steak.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
I wish I could mod the Wikipedia article up.
...and therein lies its true flaw. As the law stipulates doubling transistor counts, as soon as processors are primarily developed with non-transistor based technologies, be they optical or quantum derived, Moore's Law is essentially defunct.
It's only mostly dead.
Here's are some thoughts from me:
Iran captures three CIA agents
.. but there are lots of other technologies, esp quantum... where once established you can doubble the calculation capacity every 18 months without very much dificulty.
I agree, 40 years is actually pretty short. Most common math was proven hundreds to thousands of years ago. A good portion of physics was known a few hundred years ago. A good portion of chemistry has been around for about 150 years.
What is impressive: he predicted the growth would follow the trend it did, in an area that hadn't really been well-established.
Which leads to a second dilemna: since Moore was heavily involved in the industry that the law describes growth in, did Moore's law follow the natural growth, or the growth match Moore's law because industry decided to follow the law?
Well, it's impressive for a "law" which is not in any fundamental sense a law, but a speculation about future progress.
Very few speculations hold for so long.
By the way, I assume your account name is pronounced "fish".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"Moore's Law" is a theory about innovation, not a law in any way. Sure it's fun to call it a law, but it has no basis in physical phenomena, and it's breakable-- Moore himself says it should run out. Scientific laws don't expire.
Many people have used Moore's Law to loosely talk about computer power doubling every x months. Interpreted that way, Moore's law could survive quite a while longer.
Having said the above however, exponential growth always ends when it bumps into physical barriers. Otherwise the planet would be covered a thousand feet deep in dead flies (who as we all know reproduce exponentially when the environment permits.)
But few if any of those involve exponential improvement.
Modern computers already match us in terms of raw power. However, our operating system is *way* cooler, and we get better peripherals :)
No comment.
If you can double the density of your transistors anymoore, you still can fake it, by doubling the number of cores every year, as Intel and AMD will do. Another thendy trick is to add units for hardware threads... But, if you can figure out how make several layers of cores, the density will double every year again, mixing DVD technology and CPU manufacturers projects, this is the commercial version of moore's law...
No it can't, because we still don't understand how the brain(s) work, because the neurons ain't the only thing working in there, ...
The best thing we can do is throw random "computing equivalent" numbers and check if we're there right now
And these random numbers are modified every other morning...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Will anything hold forever?
Krazy Glue and anyone on the phone with Symantec.
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
But think how fast it could vegetate!
The real strength of computers is that they can make mistakes so much faster than we puny, limited humans. A vegetative system system with a hundred billion neurons would obviously be superior to us puny humans because it could make human-scale mistakes unimaginably quickly, as it sat there, quietly vegetating ... inert.
Right! A vegetative system system with a hundred billion neurons would obviously be superior to us puny humans because it could sit there and do nothing, and do it very fast indeed.
See what I've been reading.
Perhaps Moore's law really is beginning to run up against its limits, as you will see if you read enough electronics magazines, but what I really don't "get" is this: The Intel processor can do amazing things, but look at the Motorola processors, like the G4s in those Macs... They're faster at floating point and at a variety of other uses. Their instruction set is quite different. There are many other significant differences between the Intel and Motorola processors. And as we know from software, the way an algorithm is made up, or the way it is implemented, can drastically affect the performance. I think processors follow quite the same rules. Maybe it's time, while we're running up against the limits of Moore's law, to examine what software needs to do nowadays, and then design a processor from the ground up that will fulfill each function in the most efficient way possible. And while we're at it, let's go back to the good ol' days of making the software efficient, too. You'd be amazed the kinds of ridiculous things todays' computers can do, but the software is just too darn inefficient.
I guess nothing. Remove the feeding tube.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
However, most common math does not involve some physical matter that shrinks exponentially. It's really the exponential part that is impressive. Exponential growth over a couple of year is not such a big deal, but 40 years is huge. The 1965's chip had 60 devices (transistors + resistors) and today's chip have 1,700,000,000 transistors... if that's not impressive growth, I don't know what is.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Quantum computing is neat in theory, but has made not significant progress in the number of qbits manipulatable in years. Granted there are new ways to make qbits, but nothing can seem to get 7 to 10 to date. Hopefully there will be a breakthrough, but you can't just command one. There is no scaling technology for Quantum Computers yet.
I predict biological approaches will similarly run into intractably hard roadblocks on the way to usefulness, with the possible exception of practical biological to electronic interfaces to aid the disabled and in the more distant future meld with the machine so to speak.
All is not lost however, multicore is of course where the industry is going for now, but expect more specialization in silicon for well-defined tasks. Graphics processors will get more powerful as algorithms improve and are more efficiently implemented with the transistors available. Any application that becomes mainstream will get its own processing unit of some sort. Granted this make for less flexibility in expanding the capabilities of existing machines, but software has been getting a free ride off the speed scaling in chips for years. In the future the line between programming and chip designing will blur as the two must work in concert to achieve the desired performance in whatever domain is desired.
Imagine a compiler that doesn't just compile code but tapes out the coprocessor need to run it.
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I think you underestimate the rate at which human brainpower is decreasing... ;-)
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
Intel quietly rescinds its $10,000 offer for an original copy of Moore's Law.
-- Boycott Shell
Of course Moore's Law is dead. And I predict that in 18 months it will be twice as dead.
Moore's law has stuck around for forty years in the same way that my pet hampster lived for ten years. It died but got replaced by something similar with the same name and nobody noticed.
But at 1:23 p.m., Fox News Channel anchor Shepard
Smith reported that {Moore's Law} had died. At least
initially, he did not cite sources.
By 1:30 p.m., Fox reporter Greg Palkot in Rome was
sending signals of caution, saying the report had not
been confirmed and the network was checking into it.
"The exact time of death, I think, is not something that
matters so much at this moment for we will be reliving
{Moore's Law} for many days and weeks and even years
and decades and centuries to come," Smith said.