Moore, Moore, Moore

It’s not dead. It isn’t slowing down. It’s not even sick. Give it up for Moore’s Law, the computing paradigm that’s still very much alive and kicking. Jeremy Laird investigates how much longer our PCs can keep getting faster

- By Jeremy Laird

By some estimates, over half of the world’s economic growth over the last 50 years has depended on Moore’s Law. What was once an esoteric observation involving transistor density in semiconductors is arguably now the most important economic driving force on the planet. It’s the technological gift that keeps on giving. More transistors. More computing performance. For less money. Year after year.

The net result has been unprecedented global economic growth lasting decades. In other words, Moore’s Law isn’t just about faster CPUs and GPUs every year or the inevitability that the PC you buy today will be hopelessly outclassed tomorrow. It’s about the huge impact that exponential increases in computing power have had on the way we all live.

At least, that was true for about 40 years following the inception of Moore’s Law in the mid-1970s. Over the past decade, however, the assumptions around Moore’s Law have been shaken, some argue shattered. Certainly, some of the biggest players in chip production have struggled to maintain the relentless technological cadence implicit in Moore’s Law. Five or six years ago, the widespread assumption was that Moore’s Law was well on its way to becoming as dead as the dodo.