Almost exactly four years ago Gordon Moore himself predicted his own law's demise.
Moore said: "It can't continue forever. The nature of exponentials is that
you push them out and eventually disaster happens."
Steven A. Herborn
U.S. Naval Academy
Advanced Research Computing
410-293-6480 (Desk)
757-418-0505 (Cell)
_____
From: beowulf-boun...@beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf-boun...@beowulf.org] On
Behalf Of richard.wa...@comcast.net
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 6:11 PM
To: beowulf@beowulf.org
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Moores Law is dying
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Schuster" <k...@kschuster.org>
To: beowulf@beowulf.org
Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2009 2:29:17 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [Beowulf] Moores Law is dying
>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.
Mmm ... he may be right, but I do not like his historical references which
seem
to conflate engineering and economics. Better to refer to the improvement
in
magnets or something similar. But, I like the speed of sound reference
because
it suggests that there is a Moore's Law barrier to be broken. There is a
lot of
talk about "walls" these days ... the memory wall, the power wall, ... but
we with
respect compute power we have a ways to go before we reach the Bremermann
Limit.
rbw
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