The computing industry owes a lot to the guiding vision of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, whose prediction about the pace of advancement in the computing industry has been a fixture for more than 50 years. But how much room does this rule have left to run?
Moore’s Law
Moore, who was the president of Intel at the time, delivered his famous prediction – known as Moore’s Law – at the 1975 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting, according to the Computer History Museum.
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This prediction, however, wasn’t his first. A decade before, Moore authored an article titled ‘Cramming more components onto integrated circuits‘ in which he predicted that the number of transistors crammed into integrated circuits would double every year.
The initial projections were incorrect, but he was confident that, thanks to advances in technology, his projection could be realized accurately if he updated his timelines.
It eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the semiconductor industry almost using this prediction as a benchmark against which to judge progress – with engineers challenged to deliver breakthroughs that ensured their work complied with Moore’s Law.
The future of chipmaking
Moore’s Law held up for many years, but the nature of exponential growth may not seem realistic, especially given there are hard physical constraints with the widely used silicon-based semiconductors.
Although there’s no firm date at which Moore’s Law no longer applied, there’s a wide understanding that the doubling in transistor count every two years slowed down roughly 10 years ago.
In today’s age, it’s getting harder and harder to cram more transistors onto a single chip, although scientists are experimenting with new technologies or approaches that could ensure the continuation of progress. These ideas include 3D stacking as well as new semiconductor materials.
