The amount of computing power we can now squeeze into the smallest of devices is somewhat remarkable compared with what was achievable a decade ago. Looking back even five or so years and a consumer desktop system that was the best in its class would be deemed outdated if put into a smartphone of today’s standards. This is made possible simply because chip makers can increase the number of transistors on a chip significantly every year as developments in chip research advance.[1]
Back in 1965, co-founder of chip giant Intel, Gordon Moore, made an observation based on this condensing of chip size after noticing that, since their invention, transistors were doubling in size every year. So, he decided to base a theory on it. That theory is what we now know as Moore's Law.
What is Moore's Law? Moore predicted this shrinking chip trend would continue into the foreseeable future and, in a scientific paper, said that the number of transistors per square inch would double approximately every 12 months. The paper was well before its time, and predicted how "integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers."
Although Moore revised the forecast in 1975, doubling the time to two years, his prediction has proved accurate and has since been used as the current definition of Moore's law. It has been more than 50 years since Moore published his paper detailing the simple theory, and since that time it has revolutionized computing, making all the technology we see as fundamental to life today possible.
So far, Moore's Law has been proven correct, time and again, and as a result it has long been said to be responsible for most of the advances in the digital age, from PCs to supercomputers, due to it being used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and set targets for research and development. "Moore's Law is one of economics – not physics," said Intel. "It tells us that each new chip will have twice the transistors and therefore compute capability of the previous generation for the same cost of production. This simple rule has driven every advancement in the technology revolution for more than half a century and still defines the expanding boundaries of technology today, allowing us to take concepts like artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles and make them a reality."
Is Moore's Law 'slowing down?' Although proven correct for the past five decades, the winning streak of Moore's Law could finally be hitting a plateau. According to a recent report from the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), which includes chip giants such as Intel itself, alongside Samsung, transistors could get to a point where they could shrink no further by as soon as 2021. The companies argue that, by that time, it will be no longer economically viable to make them smaller, finally putting an end to Moore's Law.
This means that while they could physically be made smaller, in theory, they will reach what the ITRS call "their economic minimum", meaning doing so will only make the costs prohibitive. This isn't the first time the Moore's Law theory has been doubted. Last year, Intel's own CEO announced that the firm's shift from one transistor size to another is stretching from two to 2.5 years. He questioned this during an Intel earnings call, saying manufacturing processes haven't advanced at the same rate as in the past. However, the ITRS believes this does not mean the end of the concept behind the Law, as manufacturers find increasingly innovative ways to squeeze more switches into a given space. Take 3D NAND, for example, the idea of stacking sets of transistors on top of each other to create "3D processors".
Is the demise of Moore's Law a bad thing? While the conventional thinking is that the law's demise would be bad news, it could have its benefits, namely fueling the rise of AI. "If you care about the development of artificial intelligence, you should pray for that prediction to be true," said a prominent futurist and writer. He said, "Moore's law ending allows us to jump from artificial machine intelligence, a top down, human engineered approach; to natural machine intelligence, one that is bottom up and self-improving." As AIs no longer emerge from explicitly programmed designs, engineers are focused on building self-evolving systems like deep learning, an AI technique modelled from biological systems.
Red Sky Alliance is a Cyber Threat Analysis and Intelligence Service organization. For questions, comments or assistance, please contact the office directly at 1-844-492-7225, or feedback@wapacklabs.com
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[1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wired-explains-moores-law
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