[NAFTA threat!!] Intel's Grove warns of the end of Moore's Law

ONE THE MAJOR TECHNICAL HEADACHES facing chipmaker Intel is the leaking of current from inactive processors, company chairman Andy Grove told an audience at International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco yesterday. "Current is becoming a major factor and a limiter on how complex we can build chips," said Grove. He said the company’ engineers "just can’t get rid of" power leakage.

The problem of leakage threatens the future validity of Moores Law. As chips become more powerful and draw more power, leakage tends to increase. The industry is used to power leakage rates of up to fifteen per cent, but chips constructed of increasing numbers of transistors can suffer power leakage of up to 40 per cent said Grove. In chips made up of a billion transistors may leak between 60 and 70 Watts of power, he warned. The power is largely dissipated as heat causing cooling problems for powerful chips.

While Intel is seeking ways to design chips with multiple cores with improved design and better insulators, Grove suggested that Moore Law regarding the doubling of transistor densities every couple of years will be redundant by the end of the decade. Chip makers will have to make more efficient use of the transistor in order to deliver ever increasing performance, he suggested.

Grove also addressed the diminished likelihood of an upturn in the chip industry in the near future. "Over the course of the past year (the industry) has been bounding along on the bottom," he said, but he warned that the threat of a "war" on Iraq doesn’t bode well for the future employment rate in the US and a may spark a consequent "meltdown" in some South American economies.

The industry "was operating, in retrospect, way ahead of the underlying demand," he said in his keynote speech to the conference. "The excess of the latter 1990s was so much bigger than previous excesses," he confessed.

Grove also later warned that the trend of migrating chip manufacturing to far eastern fabs could shift the balance eastwards. "It is easy to project," he said, "that the interdependence becomes more one-sided, with an adverse impact on our educational system because so much of the university funding comes from industry. There is a spiral there in the wrong direction."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grove also later warned that the trend of migrating chip manufacturing to far eastern fabs could shift the balance eastwards. "It is easy to project," he said, "that the interdependence becomes more one-sided, with an adverse impact on our educational system because so much of the university funding comes from industry. There is a spiral there in the wrong direction."

The trend also carried "huge" implications for defence, he warned

Well DUH!!! We have a suicidal foreign economic policy, arming the enemies while disarming. Bush needs to be emailed about this.

It is like all hight techs of the past. It matures. When auto's went 10 miles an hour there was not much market for a used one that went 3 miles an hour. When auto's went 25 miles an hour there was not much market for a used one that went 10 miles an hour. When auto's went 40 miles an hour there was not much market for a used one that went 25 miles an hour. When auto's went 60 miles an hour there was not much market for a used one that went 40 miles an hour.

But once they all went 80 miles an hour there was not much difference between a new one ane a used on.

Maturingy in a high teck item gan ge gauged when a uses market develops. Currently there are 5 stores including the Microcenter Super Store selling used computers.

When a 3 year old used computer can do the job in the workplace as well as a new computer, management will not upgrade just becuase Grove and Microsoft want them to do so.

For word processing and spreadsheats we have come to the point where buying a new machine or upgrading software offers nothing.

As in all goods where used markets develop there will be a market for accessories to be used on a machine.

But to say computing power has outpaces both operating systems and CPUs is the understatement of they decade.

What is happening now in computers happened in TVs. First there were black and white models. Ten inch followed by 12, 15,17,19,21,and 24 inch sets. Then came color sets. But then color matured. Where people once bought new TVs every 3 years or so, they know buy one when it stops working.

Microsoft is trying to continue its revenue by renting the software. Gates is trying to convince businesses that they want to rent. But some one will clone windows and sell it for $19.95 a copy and Gates will be as important to software as Studebaker is to cars. Just in case you don't know when Ford started Studebaker was the largerst land vehicle maker in the word.

There are lots of poeple telling us that this spring lots of machines will become obsolote and that tons of companies will upgade when microsoft drops support for older products.

Form a company to provide support for products Microsoft no longer supports might be a better business oportunity than trying to market rental agreements for Microsoft's newer versions.

For word processing and spreadsheats we have come to the point where buying a new machine or upgrading software offers nothing. :::::::::::::::Upgrading means that the older programs don't work on your new machine, won't translate into the newer forms and your old data is lost.. I'd love a 2gHz Super Blue sitting on my desk, but I can't afford to lose the 80 GigBytes of data I have in Win95 based programs. The training required for the new "improved" systems are cost prohibitive.
I'll just truck along on my 200Mhz antique....maybe pick up a 600mHz wizbang used engine at the local recycle bin and load up a partition program with Win 95 & 98.....maybe I'll save 10 sec per form......maybe not.

Just because the silicon mask type of CPU is maxxed out doesn't mean the end of moores law. It might mean the end of Intel, which has ridden that wave. 3-D chips, chips that use light instead of electricity, nano-CPUs, even DNA based CPUs have all been suggested. So have quantum computers, but I really don't understand them, even conceptually.

Of course Moore's Law is just an observation about price/performance in the CPU market, not the equivelant of the Second Law of Thermodynamics or something, so it is quite possible it could stop being true at any time.

Clusters will accomplish most of what faster CPUs have done in any case.

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