Moore’s Law Discussed

Moore’s Law DiscussedJoseph C. Campbell – 02/20/2010

Copyright © 2010 Joseph C. Campbell 2

What is Moore’s Law

• A paper published in Electronic Magazine, Volume 38, Number 8, Page 114 on April 19, 1965 by Dr. Gordon E. Moore put forward:

Costs and Curves“Reduced cost is one of the big attractions of integrated electronics, and the cost advantage continues to increase as the technology evolves toward the production of larger and larger circuit functions on a single semiconductor substrate. For simple circuits, the cost per component is nearly inversely proportional to the number of components, the result of the equivalent piece of semiconductor in the equivalent package containing more components. But as components are added, decreased yields more than compensate for the increased complexity, tending to raise the cost per component. Thus there is a minimum cost at any given time in the evolution of the technology. At present, it is reached when 50 components are used per circuit. But the minimum is rising rapidly while the entire cost curve is falling. If we look ahead five years, a plot of costs suggests that the minimum cost per component might be expected in circuits with about 1,000 components per circuit (providing such circuit functions can be produced in moderate quantities.) In 1970, the manufacturing cost per component can be expected to be only a tenth of the present cost. 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.”

Foot Notes: 1. The phrase “Moore’s Law was coined by Carver Mead a professor at Caltech around 19702. Moore later in 1975 restates the doubling as 2 years citing “I noticed we were losing one of the key factors that let us make this

remarkable rate of progress”3. There is a misnomer that the period is 18 months, this was actually a reinterpretation by David House then at Intel™ and not from

Moore.

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Moore’s Law Compared to Energy

Man Attempts Fusion

Man Burns Wood

Man Mines Coal

1

2

3 Man Drills Oil

Man Harness Fission4

5

Wood is collected from the ground

Standing timbers are cut

Reforestation is required

Axioms derived from comparison:1. All trends are driven in a sigmoidal

stair-step fashion

2. Each step is required to drive the successive step

3. The last step is the “Governing Event” which shifts the paradigm

4. Each sigmoidal apex is more costly to over come then the pervious

Parallels:

Energy was the primary driver of the industrial revolution, whereas the transistor is the driver of the technological evolution. Making an analogies comparison allows parallels to be drawn…

1

2

3 governing step

Initial Driver for Industrial Age

Deforestation Drives Man to Seek Fossil Fuelsigmoidal

apex

sigmoidalapex

Impacts & Limits of Mining Drive Further Explorations

Total Cost of Owner does not match Expected Return thus Retracement

New Options Sought to start next Sigmoidal Cycle

Sigmoidal Stair-Step

retracement

1

2

Step

Step

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Evolutionary Drivers of Moore’s Law

“Thus there is a minimum cost at any given time in the

evolution of the technology”

“cost per component is nearly inversely

proportional to the number of

components”

“The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of

roughly a factor of two per year”

1

2

3

exponential growth

sigmoidal growth

governing step

Moore’s Law:

1. Is sigmoidal and not linear as commonly believed

2. Does not define a measure (e.g. growth per square centimeter, etc) thus open ended

3. Utilizes economy (i.e. period over period decreases in component costs) to fuel rapid initial expansion

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Moo

re’s

LawImproved CAD/CAE Thermodynamics

Optical Limits

Forces for Change Forces against Change

Improved Optics

Mass Markets

Force Field:

sigmoidalapex

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Moore’s Law and Nano-Evolution

Many Futurist portray the “Nano-Revolution” as arriving via carbon “nano-tubes” or a form of exotic “grey goo” at some not to distant future time, however not now. The reality is this will not be a “revolution” however an “evolution” and it was started in 1954 with the mass production of the transistor.

Today this “evolution” can be found all round us, in our toaster to the microwave oven via the embedded microprocessors which contain millions of nano-sized electronic machines which do our bidding without us evening thinking about them.

Today these devices lack autonomous organization, that will evolve with their ability to socially connect with other devices via protocols such as Blue-Tooth and be extended by 4G developments creating “nano-swams”.

As Moore’s Law continues to drive down the cost and size of integrated circuits they will find their way into more and more devices which in turn will further fuel the information available for the nano-swams to share and therefore drive their actions…

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The Importance of Moore’s law

As a business enabler, Moore’s law is grossly underestimated as a driver of under-inflation in world economic markets. Creating the equivalent the “Big Mac” measure using transistors one quickly see’s:

“Since a transistor’s price in 1954 was 64 million times more than it is as of this writing, the economic value the industry has brought to the world is unimaginable. If we take 2006’s market and adjust for inflation, the value of to day’s integrated circuit production would be 13 peta-dollars – or $13,000 trillion. That is far larger than Gross World Product, which measures the value of output of all the world’s economies.” Into the Nano Era, Moore’s Law Beyond Planar Silicon CMOS – Dr Howard R. Huff 2009 Springer

In addition to its intrinsic effect, Moore’s Law also drives external counter inflationary factors such as energy consumption by reducing the need for transportation, speeding production cycles, and reducing design times. In addition it also adds to the positive turn over of cash within the markets by driving obsolesces at a feverish pace. Where as business may purchase a truck and accept it performance for 10 to 15 years, business can not do the same with computing technology and maintain business viability…

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The Impact of Moore’s Wall

Lately the popular media has coined the phase Moore’s Wall as a counter to the long standing law as it appears to be reaching a sigmoidal apex. At each of these inflection points, there occurs a retracing or consolidating effort. This can be seen in the energy analogy where the 1970’s saw the push to atomic fission with a almost a three decade retrace to coal fired plants. The same is happening with Moore’s Law as the optical limits of the lithography used to create the die to the shear ability of the medium (silicon in this case) to be formed to yet even smaller dimensions.

However manufactures in an effort to continue the Law and thus continue to support their now repetitive revenue base have resorted to the release of “multi-core” chips. This is a false economy when it comes to the law as Moore intend the goal to be an increase in computing power not a broadening of which is now the case. This is further exampled by Amdahl’s Law whereas The speedup of a program using multiple processors in parallel computing is limited by the time needed for the sequential fractioning of the program. This vary fact is another indicator that the “Law” has reached sigmoidal apex in it’s climb to the top of the wall.

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The Future of Moore’s Law

Many experts in the field believe that Moore’s Law will extend out to the year 2020 before significant pressures alter its driving forces. Herein what are the potential “game changes” which may create the next and perpetuate the law?

•New substrates such as industrial grade diamond to replace silicon•Horizontal aggregation of computing power such as cloud computing •New technologies such as the memsistors to redefine the landscape•Folded architectures to dynamically increase surface areas as found in the brain•Improved concepts in software logic and message passing

Some Candidates Are:

There are other questions which must also be understood such as the relationship of the ability to compute information as compared to the ability to store it in the same effective manner. As the greater man’s ability to compute becomes, the more information he will create in a never ending self staining loop.

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Release and Right to Use

2/20/2010

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Moore’s Law Discussed

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