ALKHOBAR, 19 April 2005 — Today we celebrate the 40th anniversary of a prediction made by an aspiring engineer. That prediction, known as Moore’s Law, became a driver and benchmark of the IT industry.
On April 19, 1965 the now defunct Electronics Magazine published a paper by Gordon Moore (ftp://download.intel.com/research/silicon/moorespaper.pdf). In his paper he wrote, “The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year ... Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer.”
The most common way Moore’s Law is expressed is the doubling of the number of transistors on integrated circuits (a rough measure of computer processing power) every 18 months. At the end of the 1970s, Moore’s Law became known as the limit for the number of transistors on the most complex chips.
According to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), Moore’s Law can remain in effect for another 15 to 20 years. For that to happen however, there will be a need to overcome a number of challenging obstacles.
“Countless experts have been predicting the imminent demise of Moore’s Law for at least 20 years,” said SIA President George Scalise. “They have all been wrong. There are many economic, physical and technological obstacles that could slow or halt progress according to Moore’s Law. Scientists throughout the world are working to be the first to overcome these obstacles. While the resources required to continue progress are significant, the rewards for leadership in microelectronics are enormous.”
Yes, there will be those who continue to work for leadership in microelectronics, but the average person probably already has enough computing power for their needs. The truth is that the most advanced chips aren’t the ones that sell the most by volume. By the end of this year chips with 65-nanometer elements will be available, but about 80 percent of the chips sold in 2005 will be 180 nanometers or higher.
There will be those universities and governments desperate to increase the power of their supercomputers though, and so the number of components on a silicon chip will continue to double. It is already apparent that it will be possible to manufacture chips down to 32-nanometers by 2010. After that, the semiconductor industry isn’t clear what will come next. What is certain is that the manufacture of chips below 32-nanometers will be complex, expensive and nothing like what we’re doing today.
It should be noted that some people attribute Moore’s Law to Douglas Engelbart, who made a similar comment as early as 1960. Engelbart, a co-creator of the computer mouse, thought that the constant scaling down of circuits would allow the eventual creation of an interactive computing system.
Be that as it may, Intel has launched a search on eBay for a copy of the April 19, 1965 issue of Electronics Magazine. Intel is offering $10,000 for an original copy, in mint condition, of that issue. It turns out that while Intel and Moore have photocopies of the article, Moore loaned out the last original of the issue that he had, and lost track of it. Intel stated that it may buy more than one copy if they become available. The Intel posting can be found on eBay’s “want it now” website, http://pages.ebay.com/wantitnow/. — M.Y.B.I
