Posted on 02/10/2003 3:22:48 PM PST by GeneD
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Gordon Moore, the computer pioneer who four decades ago predicted the explosion in transistor power driving the electronics revolution, said on Monday he sees at least another decade of progress ahead.
Moore, 74, the creator of "Moore's Law," told a meeting of many of the world's preeminent chip designers that engineers must concentrate on overcoming power leakage and reducing heat levels as more and more circuits are crammed closer together.
"No physical quantity can continue to change exponentially forever," he cautioned. "Your job is delaying forever."
The co-founder and chairman emeritus of Intel Corp., the world's biggest chipmaker, first predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on a semiconductor, and thus overall chip performance, would double every two years.
Moore later boosted what is now known as Moore's Law to a prediction that the power of a chip would double every 20 months. These inexorable performance gains, which show little sign of abating nearly 40 years later, have fueled huge advances in computer calculating power that come at ever lower cost.
Questions about how long the industry can continue to make breakthroughs in the physical limitations governing computer chip design are as old as Moore's Law itself. Naysayers often question whether materials science and improvements in manufacturing processes can keep pace.
Asked if Moore's Law would run its course in the foreseeable future, Moore replied, "Another decade is probably straightforward. None of these things hits an abrupt wall."
The Silicon Valley veteran made his comments to reporters following a keynote speech to scientific researchers at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.
Transistors are the millions of tiny switches on a chip that flip on and off millions of times per second.
Current limitations on Moore's Law include electrical power leakage and heat dissipation that increases each time more transistors are packed into a smaller area, making chips "not far from the power density of a nuclear reactor," he quipped.
Entire industries depend on semiconductors, which serve as the brains of everything from cell phones to computers to cars. Innovations have pushed the size of chips smaller and added more functionality in a smaller area for less cost.
The number of transistors on a single chip has grown 300 million-fold since Intel introduced its first microprocessor 35 years ago. That represents a performance increase of about 80 percent per year. He compared transistors to the number of ants crawling around the world.
Meanwhile, the cost has dropped from $1 per transistor in 1968 to $1 per 50 million transistors now, he said.
(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in New York)
That was 12 generations ago.
An incredible testament to human ingenuity and the power of free markets. How fast would chips have improved if development had been the work of a government agency?
I don't know, but keep an eye on the new hydrogen car.
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