[Beowulf] Moores Law is dying

[Stuart Midgley]

its not a law, it was an observation.  Like with most observations, it  
isn't meant to be definitive or extrapolated too far.

I hate the term "moores law" and the expectation that it holds and one  
day might be broken.


-- 
Dr Stuart Midgley
sdm900 at gmail.com



On 09/04/2009, at 2:29 AM, Ken Schuster wrote:

> "An IBM researcher says Moore's Law is running out of gas.
> IBM Fellow Carl Anderson, who oversees physical design and tools in  
> its server division, predicted the end of continued exponential  
> scaling down of the size and cost of semiconductors...
> "There was exponential growth in the railroad industry in the 1800s;  
> there was exponential growth in the automobile industry in the 1930s  
> and 1940s; and there was exponential growth in the performance of  
> aircraft until [test pilots reached] the speed of sound. But  
> eventually exponential growth always comes to an end," said Anderson.
> A generation or two of continued exponential growth will likely  
> continue only for leading-edge chips such as multicore  
> microprocessors, but more designers are finding that everyday  
> applications do not require the latest physical designs, Anderson  
> said.
> Consequently, Moore's Law--halving of the dimensions and doubling of  
> speed of chips every 18 months--will run out of steam very soon.  
> Only a few high-end chip makers today can even afford the exorbitant  
> cost of next-generation research and design, much less the fabs to  
> build them.
> Anderson cited three next-generation technologies that were still on  
> the fast track for exponential growth: optical interconnects, 3-D  
> chips and accelerator-based processing. He predicted that rack-to- 
> rack optical interconnects will become commonplace, with chip-to- 
> chip optical connections on the same board coming soon. But Anderson  
> said on-chip optical signaling remains years away. He also predicted  
> that stacked DRAM dies would be the first to go 3-D.
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