The browser version you are using is not recommended for this site. Please consider upgrading to the latest version of your browser by clicking one of the following links. In , Gordon Moore made a prediction that would set the pace for our modern digital revolution.
From careful observation of an emerging trend, Moore extrapolated that computing would dramatically increase in power, and decrease in relative cost, at an exponential pace. As a co-founder, Gordon paved the path for Intel to make the ever faster, smaller, more affordable transistors that drive our modern tools and toys. Integrated circuits, with multiple transistors and other electronic devices interconnected with aluminum metal lines on a tiny square of silicon wafer, had been invented a few years earlier by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor.
Moore also saw that there was plenty of room for engineering advances to increase the number of transistors you could affordably and reliably put on a chip. Soon these cheaper, more powerful chips would become what economists like to call a general purpose technology—one so fundamental that it spawns all sorts of other innovations and advances in multiple industries. A few years ago, leading economists credited the information technology made possible by integrated circuits with a third of US productivity growth since But how did a simple prediction, based on extrapolating from a graph of the number of transistors by year—a graph that at the time had only a few data points—come to define a half-century of progress?
In part, at least, because the semiconductor industry decided it would. Though the pace of progress has slipped in recent years, the most advanced chips today have nearly 50 billion transistors.
Every year since , MIT Technology Review has chosen the 10 most important breakthrough technologies of the year. Others on the list, including quantum supremacy, molecules discovered using AI, and even anti-aging treatments and hyper-personalized drugs, are due largely to the computational power available to researchers. Or what if, as some suspect, it has already died, and we are already running on the fumes of the greatest technology engine of our time?
The newest Intel fabrication plant, meant to build chips with minimum feature sizes of 10 nanometers, was much delayed, delivering chips in , five years after the previous generation of chips with nanometer features. In early , the CEO of the large chipmaker Nvidia agreed. Over the decades, some, including Moore himself at times, fretted that they could see the end in sight, as it got harder to make smaller and smaller transistors. The number of transistors and other components on integrated circuits will double every year for the next 10 years.
But Moore also set expectations— inspiring a self-fulfilling prophecy. Doubling chip complexity doubled computing power without significantly increasing cost. The number of transistors per chip rose from a handful in the s to billions by the s. Eventually, Moore's insight became a prediction, which in turn became the golden rule known as Moore's Law.
Moore's Law has been a driving force of technological and social change, productivity, and economic growth that are hallmarks of the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Moore's Law implies that computers, machines that run on computers, and computing power all become smaller, faster, and cheaper with time, as transistors on integrated circuits become more efficient.
More than 50 years later, we feel the lasting impact and benefits of Moore's Law in many ways. As transistors in integrated circuits become more efficient, computers become smaller and faster.
Chips and transistors are microscopic structures that contain carbon and silicon molecules, which are aligned perfectly to move electricity along the circuit faster. The faster a microchip processes electrical signals, the more efficient a computer becomes. The cost of higher-powered computers has been dropping annually, partly because of lower labor costs and reduced semiconductor prices. Practically every facet of a high-tech society benefits from Moore's Law in action. Mobile devices, such as smartphones and computer tablets would not work without tiny processors; neither would video games, spreadsheets, accurate weather forecasts, and global positioning systems GPS.
Moreover, smaller and faster computers improve transportation, health care, education, and energy production—to name but a few of the industries that have progressed because of the increased power of computer chips. Experts agree that computers should reach the physical limits of Moore's Law at some point in the s. The high temperatures of transistors eventually would make it impossible to create smaller circuits. This is because cooling down the transistors takes more energy than the amount of energy that already passes through the transistors.
In a interview, Moore himself admitted that " We're pushing up against some fairly fundamental limits so one of these days we're going to have to stop making things smaller. The fact that Moore's Law may be approaching its natural death is perhaps most painfully present at the chip manufacturers themselves; as these companies are saddled with the task of building ever-more-powerful chips against the reality of physical odds.
Even Intel is competing with itself and its industry to create what ultimately may not be possible. In , with its nanometer nm processor, Intel was able to boast of having the world's smallest and most advanced transistors in a mass-produced product.
In , Intel launched an even smaller, more powerful 14nm chip; and today, the company is struggling to bring its 10nm chip to market. For perspective, one nanometer is one billionth of a meter, smaller than the wavelength of visible light. The diameter of an atom ranges from about 0. The vision of an endlessly empowered and interconnected future brings both challenges and benefits. Shrinking transistors have powered advances in computing for more than half a century, but soon engineers and scientists must find other ways to make computers more capable.
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