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Why Intel Insists Rumors Of The Demise Of Moore's Law Are Greatly Exaggerated (fastcompany.com)
From an article on FastCompany: Intel hasn't lost its zeal for big leaps in computing, even as it changes the way it introduces new chips, and branches beyond the PC processor into other areas like computer vision and the internet of things. "Number one, too many people have been writing about the end of Moore's law, and we have to correct that misimpression," Mark Bohr, Intel's technology and manufacturing group senior fellow and director of process architecture and integration, says in an interview. "And number two, Intel has developed some pretty compelling technologies ... that not only prove that Moore's law is still alive, but that it's going to continue to provide the best benefits of density, cost performance, and power." But while Moore's law soldiers on, it's no longer associated with the types of performance gains Intel was making 10 to 20 years ago. The practical benefits of Moore's law are not what they used to be. [...] For each new generation of microprocessor, Intel used to adhere to a two-step cycle, called the "tick-tock." The "tick" is where Moore's law takes effect, using a new manufacturing process to shrink the size of each transistor and pack more of them onto a chip. The subsequent "tock" introduces a new microarchitecture, which yields further performance improvements by optimizing how the chip carries out instructions. Intel would typically go through this cycle once every two years. But in recent years, shrinking the size of transistors has become more challenging, and in 2016, Intel made a major change. The latest 14 nm process added a third "optimization" step after the architectural change, with modest performance improvements and new features such as 4K HDR video support. And in January, Intel said it would add a fourth optimization step, stretching the cycle out even further. The move to a 10 nm process won't happen until the second half of 2017, three years after the last "tick," and Intel expects the new four-step process to repeat itself. This "hyper scaling" allows computing power to continue to increase while needing fewer changes in the manufacturing process. If you divide the number of transistors in Intel's current tick by the surface area of two common logic cells, the rate of improvement still equals out to more than double every two years, keeping Moore's law on track. "Yes, they've taken longer, but we've taken bigger steps," Bohr said during his three-hour presentation.
Seems the size of the paragraph doubles every 2 stories.
Table-ized A.I.
Moore's law is an empirical law in the sense of Ohm's law, which most familiar materials obey but some do not.
"This "hyper scaling" allows computing power to continue to increase while needing fewer changes in the manufacturing process."
This "hyper scaling" allows Intel to continue to milk customers who expect more than modest gains with every generation.
FTFY
Number of Transistors may still be increasing in density but computers aren't seeing the revolutionary jumps in power and performance- it's not scaling to us end users. I have a 5 year old PC at home I built, and it rivals most of the mainstream PCs being put out today. Even if Moore's law is still holding true, it's not really relevant anymore.
Computers aren't getting much faster any more. Processors may be getting smaller as transistors density gets higher, but your average home PC isn't getting much better.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Is it just me or does this whole diatribe just ooze "pathetic marketing maneuver"?
It's one thing to admit that things are getting more challenging cause the low-hanging fruit is gone and Intel's having to put more time and effort into their manufacturing, but for the love of Pete, redefining Moore's Law is just lame.
I really wish Apple had a tightly held patent on their reality distortion field cause now everyone else is trying to use it and it's just... cringeworthy.
Yes. Yes I do. Please provide one.
It's tongue-in-cheek. Everyone who knows anything about Moore's Law is perfectly aware it is not an actual physical law. It doesn't need mentioning. We only need to be careful in our terminology when there's genuine ambiguity, which is not the case here.
We haven't had any noticeable gains in computing for a long while. Other than SSD, nothing got notably faster or bigger. What is not clear to me if we hit diminishing returns or lack of competition allowed market leaders to sleep on laurels.
If this is diminishing return on hardware - then next area is software optimization. So far, most of our progress was carried by hardware. This is not going to be popular view among programmers, but default mode of operation is "how much resources do I have, lets use it all" in software engineering. There is no thought given to making it leaner and more efficient, because it used to be that hardware gains over time would make such effort moot. Well, there might not be any more notable gains. We will hit the next nm fab level, get 3D layout process in place and not have a good way to move forward other than occasional specialized optimizations (e.g. AES) acceleration). This might take a form of optional co-processors.
However, what matters to me is that a 10-year-old desktop computer is not very far behind, performance-wise, a 2017 desktop computer.
Interesting. But let's not forget that Moore's law is about exponential growth of transistor density, not NOT exponential improvement in performance. The transistors are (I believe) being fruitful and multiplying as they have been for four decades. What, if anything, useful is done with them is another issue.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Moore's Law isn't just dead. It's dead, buried, flowers have been laid, songs have been sung, and the mourners have left.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.