For about a year or so now, Moore’s Law has prevented me from
buying a brand-new computer.
Not that I need a brand-new computer, mind you. My
seven-year-old Compaq Presario still works well enough, thank you
very much.
For about a year or so now, Moore’s Law has prevented me from buying a brand-new computer.
Not that I need a brand-new computer, mind you. My seven-year-old Compaq Presario still works well enough, thank you very much. It satisfies my basic needs for word-processing, e-mailing and Web surfing.
But unfortunately, for the last 12 or so months, I’ve suffered from what geeky folks commonly refer to as “PC envy.”
Lately, I’ve been looking longingly – shall we say lustfully? – at the full-page spreads of Fry’s Electronics ads. I drool over the latest-and-greatest computers featured for sale. In fact, I feel a bit aroused reading the sexy details: “Pentium 4 519J 3.06 GHz.” (Oooh.) “512 MB DDR PC3200.” (Ahhhh.) “200 GB SATA Hard Drive.” (Don’t stop!)
When I purchased my Compaq seven years ago, it was the latest and greatest machine commercially available. Its heart was a state-of-the-art Pentium chugging out tons of zeroes and ones. I felt proud of my machine. I showed it off to friends and neighbors as if it were my newborn baby.
But now comparing it with what’s hot on the market, I see the damn contraption approaching antique-hood. In fact, I’m a little embarrassed to confess to folks I’m using something so … so 1990s.
But Moore’s Law lingers in my mind, preventing me from plunking down my American Express and purchasing a brand-new computer. What exactly is this bit of legislation known as “Moore’s Law”? Well, it’s not some governmental decree. It’s a brilliant observation made 40 years ago by a bright young Silicon Valley engineer named Gordon Moore.
He made his famous proclamation in an article he wrote for Electronics Magazine.
Moore essentially said that computer chip design improves so dramatically, the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits doubles every year.
A “transistor” is a tiny switch or gate that either lets electrons pass through a circuit or blocks them from traveling on. This feeds a stream “1s” and “0s” impulses which creates the processing essence of all software code.
Moore’s Law first sounds like geek gobbledygook, but it’s pretty significant in terms of what it means for high-tech development. It essentially comes down to the mathematical principle of the power of exponentials.
Here’s the secret behind how exponential magic works. Take a penny. The next day, double it. You now have two pennies. The next day double that so you have four pennies. Keep doubling your money for a month and you’ll soon have well over $11 million.
With exponentials, something that’s at first very small quickly becomes something very large. The same idea applies to Moore’s Law for computer chips. At first, as chip processing power doubles, you don’t see any real significant growth – kind of a flat line on a graph. But at some point, the doubling jumps out at you – the graph starts to rocket to the stratosphere.
Back 40 years ago when Moore made his prediction about integrated circuit technology, an advanced microchip had about 60 transistors on it. Intel’s latest chip, the Itanium 2, contains a whooping 1.7 billion transistors.
Moore’s Law means that computer chip technology doubles in performance every 18 or so months. Computers keep getting cheaper, smaller and faster.
For Mr. Joe Average computer user, that means the super-duper speedy computer bought today becomes a has-been slow-poke in a couple of years. And that’s how Moore’s Law has created my digital dilemma about buying a brand-new computer. I want the latest and greatest PC technology now available. But I know deep in my heart that in a couple of years, my PC will only be half as great. It’ll become a mere shadow of what’s blazing hot on the market in the near future.
Now you might laugh at my predicament. But Moore’s Law and this consumer-impulse dilemma dramatically changed the South Valley during the last few decades. Whether you own a computer or not, Moore’s Law changed your life.
See, Moore’s Law threw down the gauntlet for Silicon Valley engineers. It set an overwhelming notion in their minds that chip technology must keep advancing no matter what. (In the 1970s, Moore amended his “law” to say processing power doubles every two years.)
Moore’s Law drove Silicon Valley’s computer industry, creating a global compulsion to not to get left behind with yesterday’s computing gizmos. It created a market attitude of “I-gotta-have-a-better-faster-cheaper-machine.”
That sinister attitude sold billions of dollars in high-tech wares. And it made a lot of people in Silicon Valley a lot of cash. That promise of wealth, in the last couple of decades, also drew a lot of people to this area.
Those people, of course, needed places to live. They needed big fancy homes. And that stimulated a lot of construction of new neighborhoods. They came to Hollister, Gilroy, Morgan Hill, San Juan Bautista and San Martin and plunked down wads of dollars for real estate.
Who would’ve thought that a simply-stated prediction made in an electronics publication would have changed South Valley’s small agriculture towns into rapidly expanding sleeper communities for the computer industry?
Of course, like virtually everything in electronics, Moore’s Law has a shelf life. Engineers estimate that sometime around the year 2015, silicon-based computer chips will reach a fundamental physical limit. The atom-sized gaps in integrated circuits will become so tiny, electrons will “jump” their transistor tracks and make computing unreliable.
With revenue billions at stake, engineers and computer whizzes now search for alternative technologies. In the not too distant future, Fry’s Electronics ads will boast of personal computers run by “nanotech” and “quantum dot” chips – perhaps with artificial intelligence. With technological progress, God knows when computers might one day become conscious entities.
Whatever the outcome, this Tuesday, Silicon Valley marks the 40th anniversary publication date of Gordon Moore’s world-altering article. And, like with most history-changing ideas, Electronics Magazine editors back then had no idea of his prediction’s significance. They buried Moore’s article way in the back of the magazine. On page 114.
