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Intel Technology

Gordon Moore: Moore's Law is Dead 379

Posted by CowboyNeal from the listen-to-the-law dept.
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.
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Gordon Moore: Moore's Law is Dead More

Gordon Moore: Moore's Law is Dead

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  • Title? (Score:5, Funny)

    by yotto ( 590067 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:50AM (#12223748) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Title? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Infinityis ( 807294 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:48PM (#12225153) Homepage
      I can see the exchange now...somewhere in a muddy field, a cart goes by, while Gordon Moore comes out to meet it

      CART MASTER: Bring out your dead!

      GORDON MOORE: Here's one.

      CART MASTER: Ninepence.

      MOORE'S LAW: I'm not dead!

      CART MASTER: What?

      GORDON MOORE: Nothing. Here's your ninepence.

      MOORE'S LAW: I'm not dead!

      CART MASTER: 'Ere. He says he's not dead!

      GORDON MOORE: Yes, he is.

      MOORE'S LAW: I'm not!

      CART MASTER: He isn't?

      GORDON MOORE: Well, he will be soon. He's very ill.

      MOORE'S LAW: I'm getting better!

      GORDON MOORE: No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment.

      CART MASTER: Oh, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.

      MOORE'S LAW: I don't want to go on the cart!

      GORDON MOORE: Oh, don't be such a baby.

      CART MASTER: I can't take him.

      MOORE'S LAW: I feel fine!

      GORDON MOORE: Well, do us a favour.

      CART MASTER: I can't.

      GORDON MOORE: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.

      CART MASTER: No, I've got to go to the Bernoulli's. They've lost nine laws today.

      GORDON MOORE: Well, when's your next round?

      CART MASTER: Thursday.

      MOORE'S LAW: I think I'll go for a walk.

      GORDON MOORE: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn't there something you can do?

      MOORE'S LAW: [singing] I feel happy. I feel happy. [whop]

      GORDON MOORE: Ah, thanks very much.

      CART MASTER: Not at all. See you on Thursday.

      GORDON MOORE: Right. All right.

      lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter lame filter

  • Oh sure mr. smarty pants! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cylix ( 55374 ) * on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:50AM (#12223751) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Other laws, however... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr Guy ( 547690 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:50AM (#12223759) Journal
    still reign supreme. Godwin's, in particular.

    (Probably going to get modded down by nazi mods)

  • Is Intel using this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:50AM (#12223760)
    as an excuse for a lack of innovation?

    "we have reached the limits so don't expect innovation!"

    • Re:Is Intel using this (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Unkle ( 586324 )
      Actually, I would think this would lead to, not prevent, innovation. The engineers are more likely saying "we've reached the limit. WTF do we do now? We can't just make it smaller..."
      • "We'll spend all the money we'd use to make it smaller and put it toward advertising and marketing towards today's demographics! Consumers will love that."

        That's what happens a lot of the time :(

      • Re:Is Intel using this (Score:5, Insightful)

        by plover ( 150551 ) * on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:05PM (#12223968) Homepage Journal
        I think the point is that most people believe Moore's Law roughly defined the pace of innovation, but specifically, he said "transistor density doubles every 24 months." Nothing else. And that's the part of the law he's declaring "dead".

        You're right, it's going to lead to other innovations: we'll might start seeing expansion in a "wider" direction becoming more common than "faster" chips. (128-bit architectures, with the next step to 256 bit machines, etc.) And/or engineers will focus on different problems, perhaps something like coming up with innovative ways to dissipate on-die heat. Things like this usually lead to other breakthroughs, too. For example, the more efficiently you can get rid of heat, the more layers you could stack on the chip. Technically, the transistor density wouldn't increase, but the transistor count on a single chip could be multiplied by orders of magnitude.

    • The law came out of the 60s. It lasted through the 80s "tronic-age", the 90s ".com-age". Which in itself is pretty impressive. Like or hate Intel, they have done a fairly good job reaching the limit.

    • Re:Is Intel using this (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:59AM (#12223892) Homepage
      They better not. Leaning back on Moore's Law enabled them to avoid innovation. Getting successively smaller and faster is a matter of refinement, not revolution.

      • Re:Is Intel using this (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Have Blue ( 616 )
        If you look beyond size and clock speed, there are lots of innovations in modern CPUs that are only present because we can put such a large number of transistors on a chip. Branch prediction, instruction reordering, etc all take up large amounts of space, and only increases in transistor density allowed them to be feasibly implemented in real-world commodity chips. Plus, there have been many advances in fabrication technology and material science made as byproducts of living up to Moore's predictions, like

        • Re:Is Intel using this (Score:3, Informative)

          by Zordak ( 123132 )
          Add Hyperthreading to that list. It's actually pretty brilliant. Basically two chips that share execution resources on a single die. Twenty years ago, you couldn't put two virtual processors on basically the same die size as one standalone processor. As feature size gets smaller, you can add lots of extra goodies to make sure that more of your transistors are doing something useful more of the time.

    • Re:Is Intel using this (Score:4, Informative)

      by strider44 ( 650833 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:05PM (#12223973)
      Though of course your post is a joke, the answer is no. Moores law itself wasn't just a number that he pulled out of his arse, but a serious study of transistors and statistics. But back then approaching the size of the atom with a transistor must have seemed a *very* remote idea. As the summary says holding for forty years is an achievement in itself.

      That said CPU power isn't just a measure of transistor density anymore (it was at least in Intel propoganda for a while), as you can see with the dual core and 64 bit developments. There's still plenty of juice left to be squeazed out of the current design before it's squeazed out.

    • Let's fake it! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by freeduke ( 786783 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:07PM (#12223988) Journal
      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...

      • Re:Let's fake it! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by plover ( 150551 ) * on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:16PM (#12224103) Homepage Journal
        The "density" does not double in a highly layered design, as the features remain a constant size. Transistor count/chip != density. Transistor count/mm^2 == density. That's all Moore's law said: "density would double every two years." And that's what he's pronounced the end of.

        Transistor density leads directly to higher speeds and lower power consumption. Transistor count can help with computational speed by offering more on-chip functionality (you pointed out the good example of multiple cores) but it does not improve the clock speed. And a higher transistor count also directly increases power consumption.

    • "as an excuse for a lack of innovation?"

      So that's why they always wanted to get their hands on the original text [wikipedia.org].

      (So they could destroy it).
    • Now if they could shrink the size of atoms... THAT would be innovative!
    • Is Intel using this as an excuse for a lack of innovation?

      Interestingly, I was just reading an article [com.com] this morning in which Intel CEO Craig Barrett addresses this. He talks about developing tiny sensors for use in the medical industry and how that will cause a push for ever smaller chips. Quote:
      • Devising chips for these purposes, of course, will rely on speeding up the pace of hardware advancement beyond what's described by Moore's Law, the observation that chips will increase in power and performance a

  • Moore's Law is Dying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sheriff_p ( 138609 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:51AM (#12223775)
    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
    • You know, seems to me that ever since I fell out of that 50th story window, people have been saying I'm going to go splat on the pavement. And while, I guess, logically, that has to be true, I seem to be out-living most of these predictions. A lot like Apple and FreeBSD ;-)

      -Jeff

    • Not necessarily. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      As scales get smaller, new effects start becoming exploitable. Electron tunneling may make it possible to reduce the space used by wiring, which in turn would increase the space available by transistors.

      Silicon is usually etched as a single-sided, flat medium. Of course, the wafer has two sides (doubling the usable surface area, if you can get rid of the extra heat fast enough), and space is three-dimensional, which means that transistors don't need to take real-estate on the wafer itself.

      Finally, and t

      • Re:Not necessarily. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Yartrebo ( 690383 )
        Plenty of problems here.
        1 - An N-state transistor takes roughly N units of space and N units of power in exchange for log(N) bits of data. The natural number (e) is the theoritical ideal number of states for a transistor, and anything above that is less than ideal.

        2 - Computational power is limited by surface area, not volume. The thicker transistors are packed, the more heat is made, and the slower they have to run.

        3 - Exponentials grow really, really fast. Moore's law in particular also has a very high

  • Trumping the CEO! (Score:5, Funny)

    by plover ( 150551 ) * on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:52AM (#12223779) Homepage Journal
    It must suck to be Intel's CEO and be quoted [com.com] 43 days ago as saying "No end in sight for Moore's Law." Especially when the person pronouncing it dead is its author.

    Oh, well, it's been pronounced dead more often than BSD on Slashdot, so it actually means very little. Even coming from Gordon Moore.

    • Re:Trumping the CEO! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shawb ( 16347 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:29PM (#12224921)
      Considering that a long term corporate plan is about... 3 months, it makes sense. Moore was saying that there are like 10-20 years left of density doubling. That is way beyond how far ahead CEOs look, so it is out of sight to him.

  • On another note (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nimloth ( 704789 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:52AM (#12223780)
    Meanwhile I suspect that the number of articles saying Moore's law can't go on forever will double every month on /. starting now.

  • end date... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bkruiser ( 610285 )
    The "law" will be stretched to include multiprocessing and a multitude of other imporperly attributed leaps in technology... (this helps to solidify how much BS is so called science)
    • "The "law" will be stretched to include multiprocessing and a multitude of other improperly attributed leaps in technology... (this helps to solidify how much BS is so called science)"

      Moore's law was never a scientific law, more an engineering/business law, which are almost always merely extrapolations of current trends. In this case Moore's law was as much a prediction as a guide for growing the business.

  • This techworld article.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:52AM (#12223791) Homepage Journal
    Will it be worth $10,000 in forty years?

    it may well buy a couple gallons of gas

  • maybe or maybe not (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:52AM (#12223794)
    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.

  • more information. (Score:5, Informative)

    by antimatt ( 782015 ) <xdivide0@gmail.com> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:52AM (#12223797) Homepage
    I wish I could mod the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] up.

  • Moore's law is inherently transistor-bound (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ikewillis ( 586793 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:53AM (#12223798) Homepage
    ...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 depends on the interpretation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:02PM (#12223930)
      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.)
  • Someone points out that Moore's law is dead, or will be dead soon. This has been the case since the law was invented!

    <sarcasm>Oh wait... THIS time its different?</sarcasm>

  • Or... (Score:2, Funny)

    by finrock ( 634521 )
    I think what is more surprising is how Moore's Law continues to accurately predict the ever increasing number of Slashdot articles on the subject of Moore's Law!

  • It's not dead (Score:5, Funny)

    by katana ( 122232 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:54AM (#12223817) Homepage
    It's only mostly dead.

  • Moore and the Future (Score:5, Funny)

    by Flywheels of Fire ( 836557 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:55AM (#12223834) Homepage
    From the TFA:Finally, asked if there were any new laws for next 40 years, he said: "I'll rest on my laurels on this one! I'm not close enough now to make new predictions - several things have been called Moore's Second Law but I can't take credit for any of them."

    Here's are some thoughts from me:

    1. Quantum Technology and/or Bio-molecular computing will become the next big thing.
    2. Software Patents [mithuro.com] will effectively make software development exclusively a big player game
    3. Virus infected nano-bots will wreak havok.
    4. High fuel prices [mithuro.com] will effectively slow the pace of technological development all around.
    5. Slashdot will hire paid editors.
  • Until Murphy's law probes the oposite. ;-)
  • Maybe not the computational power of a chip, but the computational power of the machine will continue to double. Intel and AMD will release 2,4,8,16 core chips that will double the computational power available in a single machine.
    • Why?

      The best strategy, making features smaller, is close to tapped out. We're already on plan B, multi-core. Why would we expect plan B to be mathematically similar ot plan A, given that it is fundamentally different?

    • I disagree, the computational power of a single computer will not likely continue to increase at the same rate.

      The problem limiting the number of cores in a single die becomes twofold: heat dissipation and data transfer. Even if we move to huge numbers of processors, we still have the same issues.

      Semiconductors must be run at a fairly low temperature to avoid errors. Additional gates and current generates additional heat. Heat dissipation is limited by heat transfer, which is related to surface area. Un

  • Perhaps dead with silicone (Score:4, Funny)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:57AM (#12223860)
    .. 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.
  • "This textbook contains material on Moore's Law. Moore's Law is a theory, not a fact, regarding the scaling of computer processing power. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
  • The benefits now aren't increased density, it's cheaper manufacture costs. They're giving away handheld LCD games in happy meals fer chrissakes!

    Just TRY to count the number of CPUs you've used since waking up this morning...don't forget the IR remote, your optical mouse, and your toaster...
  • I was betting on 35 years, but I forgot to take Hofstadter's Law into account.

    --
    It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.
    Hofstadter's Law

  • Not a "Law" at all (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Boss Sauce ( 655550 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:01PM (#12223921) Homepage Journal
    "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.
    • Does a law have to be based on "physical phenomenon". Moore's theories/laws/whatever governed innovation in the IT industry for well over 30 years. That ought to be good enough for anyone. There are obvious differences b/w the IT industry and natural sciences -- look at the rate in which IT has grown and evolved vs. that of traditional sciences. This is an interesting article though -- the inventor, scorning his own theory. I wonder what will come to replace it.

  • ...Moore's law is dying !

    However, there's a huge difference between being dead now (as the title claims) and dying in a few years (as the summary claims). Which one is correct ?

  • Very contradictory: The title is "Moore's Law is Dead" but then the article states, "He helpfully explains, however, that the law will hold for a few years yet."

    I guess "Moores Law will hold for a few years" isn't as much of an attention grabber, but at least it's honest.
  • Long Live Moore's Law!
  • It's not dead, it only smells funny.

  • not a Law! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by claussenvenable ( 820336 )
    Moore's "Law" is a Marketing Axiom, not a law of nature or even a good approximation of technical development.

    The chip makers have deliberately held their product releases to this rate so that they can continually improve and show growth for Wall Street.

    It's a good strategy -- got people to upgrade more often for many years -- only now are they reaching the point where a cheapo home PC has enough horsies to do everything the typical clueless user might with to -- I'm still using 4-year old boxes and doing

  • Ever wonder if it's a limitation? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CaptCanuk ( 245649 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:14PM (#12224073) Journal
    I wonder if Moore's law is a self-imposed limitation whereby people don't think outside of the box and therefore maintain a steady progress.

    Then there is conspiracy theory view of it all: Intel and AMD are colluding to stay within the bounds of Moore's law to make sure all of us by new PC's that will be outdated in 6 months rather than put out 16GHz machines tomorrow.
  • Ray Kurzweil says that Moores law, or its equivalent, has held for far more than 40 years [kurzweilai.net], and will continue far into the future. The key is that the technology has changed. He calls integrated circuits the 'fifth paradigm'.

    "There are more than enough new computing technologies now being researched, including three-dimensional silicon chips, optical computing, crystalline computing, DNA computing, and quantum computing, to keep the law of accelerating returns as applied to computation going for a long time

  • Rant for the day... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:16PM (#12224096)
    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.

  • Gee wiz, I'm so dumb (Score:3, Informative)

    by happyemoticon ( 543015 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:22PM (#12224146) Homepage

    I know the poet's version of the law, that the number of transistors doubles every year, but why do people make such a fuss about it other than the fact that it's a nice little prediction? That is: Ok, we've observed this dynamic; does it have any practical implications whatsoever?

  • Moore's Law may continue to hold for a while yet, however Eric's Law that the power consumption of a transistor is inversely proportional to its size seems to be pushing the CPU towards being a point source at T -> infinity may make increasing CPU transistor density impractical.

  • Jeez (Score:2)

    by MasTRE ( 588396 )
    Seeing how you fools have been talking about his law as if it was one of the 10 Commandments, he stepped in and humbly tried to put an end to this insanity. Probably won't make a difference, as the hype factor is too great to allow it to die.

  • Bring out your dead... (Score:3, Funny)

    by drkich ( 305460 ) <dkichline.gmail@com> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:29PM (#12224207) Homepage
    The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
    [a man puts Moore's Law on the cart]
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: Here's one.
    The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.
    The Dead Moore's Law That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
    The Dead Collector: What?
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
    The Dead Moore's Law That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
    The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: Yes he is.
    The Dead Moore's Law That Claims It Isn't: I'm not.
    The Dead Collector: He isn't.
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
    The Dead Moore's Law That Claims It Isn't: I'm getting better.
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
    The Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
    The Dead Moore's Law That Claims It Isn't: I don't want to go on the cart.
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: Oh, don't be such a baby.
    The Dead Collector: I can't take him.
    The Dead Moore's Law That Claims It Isn't: I feel fine.
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: Oh, do me a favor.
    The Dead Collector: I can't.
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
    The Dead Collector: I promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: Well, when's your next round?
    The Dead Collector: Thursday.
    The Dead Moore's Law That Claims It Isn't: I think I'll go for a walk.
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?
    The Dead Moore's Law That Claims It Isn't: I feel happy. I feel happy.
    [the Dead Collector glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Law with his a whack of his club]
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: Ah, thank you very much.
    The Dead Collector: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
    Large Man with Dead Moore's Law: Right.
  • Technology will continue to improve, but Moore's law may indeed be slowing down. Now I realize that the official Moore's Law is about the number of components on a chip, but the popular revision to "Doubling in Speed every 18 months" is more useful. No one buys a chip because it has twice as many transistors. The speed increases in clock rate largely came from scaling, and scaling is slowing down. We are starting to hit a wall at 4-5ghz, and I suspect we won't have 10ghz commercial CPUs until sometime after 2010.

    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.

  • Moore's law has been dead for a while now (Score:3, Funny)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:41PM (#12224329) Homepage Journal
    it's just noone puled the feeding tube yet.

  • The size of atoms are not a limitation. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ehiris ( 214677 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @12:58PM (#12224516) Homepage
    Why is the size of atoms a limitation to the computational speed?

    There are many different bottlenecks in a system besides the main CPU and even for the CPU there are sub-atomic particles that can make a difference. For example photons have many possible quantum states which span through dimensions we don't even understand yet.

    I believe that the law that he is speaking of fails in the Newtonian physics arena but there is a lot more to information processing. Look at a human brain for example. Do you think that the human brain is slower then the speed of a CPU in 3 years from now?

    Ever thought that maybe Moore has something to do with why CPUs don't get faster quicker? The industry is clocked at the speed defined by Moore's law. Overclockers have proved again and again that Moore's law is not really a law but a rule of thumb.

  • In other news (Score:4, Funny)

    by objekt ( 232270 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:20PM (#12224795) Homepage
    Intel quietly rescinds its $10,000 offer for an original copy of Moore's Law. [slashdot.org]

  • Of course Moore's Law is dead (Score:3, Funny)

    by utoddl ( 263055 ) <Todd_Lewis@unc.edu> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:11PM (#12225428) Homepage
    Of course Moore's Law is dead. And I predict that in 18 months it will be twice as dead.

  • Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bloater ( 12932 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:14PM (#12225464) Homepage Journal
    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.

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