its not a law, it was an observation. Like with most observations, it
isn't meant to be definitive or extrapolated too far.
I hate the term "moores law" and the expectation that it holds and one
day might be broken.
--
Dr Stuart Midgley
sdm...@gmail.com
On 09/04/2009, at 2:29 AM, Ken Schuster wrote:
"An IBM researcher says Moore's Law is running out of gas.
IBM Fellow Carl Anderson, who oversees physical design and tools in
its server division, predicted the end of continued exponential
scaling down of the size and cost of semiconductors...
"There was exponential growth in the railroad industry in the 1800s;
there was exponential growth in the automobile industry in the 1930s
and 1940s; and there was exponential growth in the performance of
aircraft until [test pilots reached] the speed of sound. But
eventually exponential growth always comes to an end," said Anderson.
A generation or two of continued exponential growth will likely
continue only for leading-edge chips such as multicore
microprocessors, but more designers are finding that everyday
applications do not require the latest physical designs, Anderson
said.
Consequently, Moore's Law--halving of the dimensions and doubling of
speed of chips every 18 months--will run out of steam very soon.
Only a few high-end chip makers today can even afford the exorbitant
cost of next-generation research and design, much less the fabs to
build them.
Anderson cited three next-generation technologies that were still on
the fast track for exponential growth: optical interconnects, 3-D
chips and accelerator-based processing. He predicted that rack-to-
rack optical interconnects will become commonplace, with chip-to-
chip optical connections on the same board coming soon. But Anderson
said on-chip optical signaling remains years away. He also predicted
that stacked DRAM dies would be the first to go 3-D.
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