Monday, May 9, 2016

The End of Moore's Law

It's hard to proce$$....

"Moore’s Law running out of room, tech looks for a successor" by John Markoff New York Times  May 05, 2016

SAN FRANCISCO — It is hard to overstate the importance of Moore’s Law. Despite its official sound, it is not actually a scientific rule like Newton’s laws of motion. Instead, it describes the pace of change in a manufacturing process that has made computers exponentially more affordable.

To replace what the semiconductor industry has done for nearly 25 years, a professional organization called the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers announced Wednesday that it will a create a new forecasting system, called the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems, that is intended to track a wider range of computer technologies.

One technology could be so-called quantum computing, a cutting-edge reimagining of how computers work that taps quantum physics — a branch of physics that explains how matter and energy interact. Another could be graphene, a form of carbon and an alternative to silicon that could produce smaller and faster transistors that use less power.

Whenever someone mentions physics I think to myself of the immutable laws that precluded the drop-down of the WTC towers on 9/11.

The industry saw signs that Moore’s Law was running out of steam as far back as 2005, when researchers began to worry that computer processors were becoming so hot that they would soon match the surface of the sun in heat output, but the industry managed to fix the problem by worrying less about increasing speed and instead splitting tasks among many processors. In effect, it kept things cool by finding a way to share the load. 

Doesn't radiation come with that?

By walking away from a task they have managed for so long, the chipmakers other than Intel are posing broader questions about their businesses....

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I had intended to do more today as I am furiously processing Globes; however, I didn't buy a Globe today, and don't want to read a Globe anymore. Thus it makes it hard to blog about a Globe so I am shutting down early.