Even for its author, Moore’s Law — a predictor of progress in the electronics industry — has been around a lot longer than expected.
“I am amazed. The original prediction was to look 10 years out, which I thought was a stretch,” Intel Corp cofounder Gordon Moore said at an event on Monday to mark 50 years since he postulated that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every two years.
For years, critics — including Moore himself — of the 1965 article that foresaw the growth of semiconductors into a US$340 billion market said there would eventually be obstacles that no amount of innovation could overcome.
Yet the assertion has held true for half a century.
Now, the exponential growth in processing power might finally be slowing.
Simply put, the cost of making things smaller — of shrinking the tiny circuits that make up the basic components of every chip — might start to outweigh the benefits.
“Everyone who has predicted the end of Moore’s Law over the last 40 years has been wrong,” said James Plummer, former head of Stanford University’s Engineering department. “That said, it is getting increasingly expensive and more difficult to continue on the trend.”
Computers have become faster every year. Handheld devices have gained the ability to store more pictures and music and to tap into Web-based data and computing resources with fast connections. The biggest beneficiary of that progress has been the end-user, whose costs have remained relatively constant.
As well as predicting the personal computer more than a decade before the device became a practical reality, Moore’s 1965 article also foresaw the mobile phone, big data and even self-driving cars.
Compared with Intel’s first microprocessor, which debuted in 1971, current models are 4,000 times faster, use about 5,000 times less energy and are 50,000 times cheaper per transistor, according to the company’s Moore’s Law: Fun Facts Web site.
Intel is far from ready to give up and is sticking to its view that there is enough time for its engineering wizards to invent the next miracle.
“It is getting more difficult and progressively more difficult every generation,” said Mark Bohr, who heads Intel’s efforts to advance its production technology. “Engineers love a challenge.”
The challenge with making anything smaller, particularly when billions of circuits are crammed into something the size of a thumbnail, is that there are physical limits that cannot be ignored.
Some of the layers of materials being deposited on discs of silicon to build the chips are atoms thick.
Circuits on chips are getting tinier than the wavelength of light used to burn them onto coated silicon, requiring the use of new technology called extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV. Chipmakers and their suppliers have struggled for more than a decade to make the shift to EUV-based manufacturing.
While Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Intel and Samsung Electronics Co have invested in ASML Holdings NV to accelerate the delivery of next-generation lithography machines, the technology has not been deployed widely.
Delays have happened in the past, but never for so long.
“Every time we have reached what we thought was a roadblock, it turned into a speed bump,” Tirias Research analyst Jim McGregor said. “This time, we have been hitting our heads against the wall for over a decade.”
Moore said he is confident that progress can continue for another five to 10 years.
In the meantime, he is hoping that Intel can call on the kind of engineering talent that for 50 years has found a way to do what seemed impossible.
“Someday it has to stop,” Moore said. “No exponential thing like this goes on forever.”
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