Next week marks the 40th anniversary of Moore’s Law and yet another
round of debate in the semiconductor community about its relevance.
Intel and its friends will celebrate the first
publication of Moore’s article Cramming More Components Onto
Integrated Circuits in a 1965 edition of Electronics magazine.
Moore, who was then head of R&D at electronics giant Fairchild
Semiconductor , said integrated circuits would lead to
such wonders as home computers or at least terminals connected to a
central computer. Moore also envisioned the number of transistors per
square inch on these integrated circuits doubling every year.
In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has
doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current
definition of Moore’s Law, which Moore himself has blessed.
Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore’s Law to hold for at least another two decades.
“Countless ‘experts’ have been predicting the imminent demise of
Moore’s Law for at least 20 years,” George Scalise, Semiconductor
Industry Association president, said in a statement. “They have all been
wrong, thanks to a relentless commitment to extending the frontiers of
science by the industry, university researchers, and the federal
government.”
But others find Moore’s Law closer to retirement than immortality.
Obstacles like pure materials science, systems architecture, and
manufacturing are becoming larger and more difficult to work around.
“We got spoiled over the past two decades because we could make
transistors that were smaller, switched faster and used far less power,”
said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst with Insight64. “Now we can only get
two out of three advantages. That doesn’t mean the law doesn’t apply, it
just means chip designers have to think differently.”
Currently, PC and server chips are made using 130-nanometer and
90-nanometer technology with plans for 65-nanometer manufactured chips
expected by the end of this year. Compare that to a decade ago when
chips were made using 500-nanometer processes.
Nanotechnology has been widely seen as a way to prolong Moore’s Law,
but increasingly powerful software originally created a need for more
powerful PCs, which, in turn, led to software that was more powerful
still. Many believe that cycle and the IT purchasing decisions based on
it are no longer relevant.
“Moore’s Law isn’t a proclamation, legislation, or fiat. It’s an
observation about the intersection of physics and economics. I’d like it
if the Speed of Light was more flexible, too, but it’s about as likely to
happen,” Jonathan Eunice, an analyst at IT market research firm
Illuminata, said.
Eunice also agrees that Moore’s Law in general has become a
frequently misused term in the industry. He said people use it to justify
that the idea that levels of chip performance, functionality, chip frequency, system performance, etc. will continue to increase exponentially.
“It doesn’t say those things at all. The broadly held misunderstanding is that many desirable attributes — performance, functionality — will increase at
similar rates. That is much closer to Raymond Kurzweil’s generalization,
which is also known as The Law of Accelerating Returns.”
Some of the biggest gains from Moore’s Law have come from new ways of
making smaller chips. Lithography tools, resist-processing tools and
materials, and etch tools have all been vastly improved from the early
days of using a camel’s hair brush back in 1957 to paint on hot wax for
the mesa transistors.
In his essay entitled 40 Years of Moore’s Law, VLSI Research
CEO Dan Hutcheson said Moore’s Law also has a wider impact than just
shrinking chips and speeding performance.
“The economic value of Moore’s Law is that it has been a powerful
deflationary force in the world’s macro-economy,” Hutcheson said.
“Inflation is a measure of price changes without any qualitative
change — so if price per function is declining, it is deflationary. This
effect has never been fully accounted for in government statistics.”
Hutcheson warns however that the costs of the research to keep
Moore’s clock ticking are rising with each node.
“I fear the day that it becomes too expensive for the private sector,
and the clock stops,” Hutcheson said. “In part because of the many
conveniences, but mostly because of the dramatic effect it has had in
driving America’s productivity and thus its leadership in the global
economy. When Moore’s clock stops, the consequences to the economy should
be obvious.”
