Moore’s law has “died at the age of 51”, according to a report by Ars Technica.
Gordon Moore, an Intel co-founder, made an observation in 1965 that the number of components in integrated circuits was doubling roughly every 12 months.
This became known as Moore’s law, which was used by the silicon chip industry as a target to be achieved.
Problems with the formulation of Moore’s law became apparent early on, stated the report.
“In 1975, Moore updated the law to have a doubling time of 24 months rather than the initial 12. Still, for three decades, simple geometric scaling enabled steady shrinks and conformed with Moore’s prediction,” said Ars Technica.
“In the 2000s, it was clear that this geometric scaling was at an end, but various technical measures were devised to keep pace of the Moore’s law curves.”
In 2016, though, it appears that Moore’s law is at an end – as the costs of making even smaller chips and the problems associated with power dissipation see the law faltering.
The use of alternative materials, quantum effects, and more exotic techniques will be required to keep up with the “easy scaling” that was seen over the recent decades, said Ars Technica.
This article originally appeared on MyBroadband and is republished with permission.
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It was a good run – Maybe now we’ll be able to get away from the terrible cost of having to build new fabs every few years.