Comment Re:Streching moore's law is nice but ... (Score 1) 102
Therefor, we have three options I see.First - we opt to double die size...
Second - we use optical based chipsets...
Third - we opt for more efficient systems, Hyperthreading is a good example of this...
This kind of thinking is deeply (but poorly) rooted in the details of Moore's Law. Moore made an observation about specific manufacturing processes of the kind mentioned here. (Except Moore had a better understanding of the technical details - for example "doubling die size" would quadruple the functional area... ALSO quadrupling the likliehood that there will be a flaw in the functional area.)
However, if you want to talk about the sort of "the future will kick ass" utopianism that people frequently associate with Moore's law then you should probably change the name to Kurzweil's Law and generalize the thinking from a specific industrial process to a trend in technology in general. Ray Kurzweil's claim is that good technology, begets better technology, begets better technology... etc. Moore's claim is expected to give out when silicon lithography gives out while Kurzweil's claim gives out when we have the best tools it is possible to have given the laws of physics.
Consider (from http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,9928,00.asp)
"Moore's Law was not the first but the fifth paradigm to provide exponential growth to computing," said Kurzweil, in Cambridge, Mass., who has calculated the rise in computing power since 1900 for his forthcoming book titled "The Singularity Is Near." The first four paradigms, he said, were electromagnetic, punch-card-based calculators used in the 1890 census; relay-based computers, most notably Alan Turing's machine for cracking the Nazi Enigma code; vacuum-tube computers commercialized in the early 1950s; and discrete transistor-based machines such as the computers used in the first NASA launches.The resulting curve, Kurzweil said, suggests an exponential continuum along which Moore's Law accounts for a relatively small stretch of intellectual real estate. This larger continuum, which is coming to be known in some futurist circles as Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Intelligence, or simply Kurzweil's Law, foresees faster growth in computational power over the next several decades than Moore's Law predicts.
"The next paradigm, the sixth, will be three-dimensional molecular computing," Kurzweil said. "In the past year, there have been major strides, for example, in creating three-dimensional carbon nanotube-based electronic circuits."