Do not count out 50-year-old – the core of Moore’s Law still alive – IDG.se

Gordon Moore. Photos: Intel Free Press
Moore’s Law has been a beacon for electronics development for several decades, but in recent years, its validity has been questioned. It is not a scientific theory, but a collection of observations and predictions made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in an article published on 19 April 1965 magazine Electronic Magazine. The core of his team is that the density of transistors, thus the number of transistors on a given surface, doubling every two years. Broadly, this means that one can purchase a substantial faster computers than the one you bought last about 18 to 24 months, given a certain amount.

The original interpretation of Moore’s Law in the technology industry was that it would be cheaper to manufacture chips with time, the cost per processes would sink. Over the past 50 years it has been based product plans and production strategies on the assumption, which led to smaller, cheaper and faster devices. In addition, improved manufacturing led to more energy-efficient chips, giving longer battery life.

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– Without Moore Law I do not think we would walk around with smartphones in hand, says Randhir Thakur, executive vice president with responsibility for the Silicon Systems Group at Applied Materials, the IDG News.

Intel applied to Initially Moore’s Law on memory chips and then on integrated circuits. Intel’s first processor 4004, which came in 1971 had 2,300 transistors. The company’s latest processors have billions of processors, is 3500 times faster and 90,000 times more energy efficient. Moore’s Law has been flexible enough to keep up with the trip.

But many have predicted that Moore’s Law will not be valid next decade, due to that traditional computers are replaced with quantum computers and systems that mimic how the human brain works. In addition, today’s chip replaced by those made with new materials, as the graph. Add the fact that many believe that Moore’s Law can be eliminated when the chip designed at the atomic level.

Another objection is that it becomes increasingly difficult to squeeze in an increasing number of functions into ever smaller chip, which is increasingly sensitive to faults and defects. In addition, changing the economic reasoning with smaller and faster chip. It is becoming increasingly expensive to build advanced factories and repayments of investment falls.

– There are always been challenges which served as a speed bump for semiconductors. Now we come to a wall, said Jim McGregor, an analyst at Tirias Research.

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can not to predict the validity for Moore’s Law in a few years, but it will lose its validity when the physical and financial aspects of the manufacture of smaller chip is changing in a way that makes operation impractical. But the essence of Moore’s Law will live on as a model to make cheaper components, leading to cheaper computers and other types of devices.