For those who many not know, Moore's Law is a principle that applies to technology and electrical/computer engineering. Gordon Moore is the co-founder and a Chairman of Intel Corporation, and in 1965 he penned a law stating that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months. Moore's Law was intended to last for at ten years, and it has held true to today providing industry goals and targets for research and development. Although now in 2012 many people are starting to think that Moore's Law cannot hold true for much longer.
Again some quick background information. A transistor is a basic component of electronic technology today. It is used to form digital logic circuits, which can be as small as on/off switches to incredibly complex central processors for computers. Below is an circuit schematic image of a transistor. It is a circuit component that all electrical and computer engineers are familiar with.
The problem that is facing Moore's Law is a physical problem. Since transistors were first created, there has been a race to make them smaller and smaller in order to fit more of them onto smaller and smaller integrated circuits. The shrinking of transistors is what powers Moore's Law. More transistors on an integrated circuit to increase performance and efficiency. Recently it has come all the way to transistors being made so small that they have pathways that are nothing more than organized structures of atoms. Most recently, researchers at the University of New South Wales have created a transistor that is a single phosphorus atom on a silicon lattice. As one may imagine, this could very well be the end of Moore's Law because at this point it is (as far as we can imagine currently) impossible to make a transistor any smaller than a single atom! If Moore's Law becomes a thing of the past, it will leave the electronics industry with no standard guiding them towards the progress that they "should" be making on an regular basis. Below is an image of the single atom transistor.
The impact of this could be very apparent in society. If Moore's Law is no longer true, there could be a great slowing down in the progress of technology. It would mostly effect the development of computer processors, but one must remember that nearly every electronic device they use has at least one processor in it. Consumers and the Developers in electronics alike would "hit a wall" with the advance of computer technology, as each big leap in technology could end up taking much more time than it has in the past.
On the other side, the potential phasing out of Moore's Law does serve as kind of challenge to many technology companies. They have lived by Moore's Law for their entire existence, and they will fight for its continued prevalence. Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments are just some of the companies that produce integrated circuits with transistors. At those companies many of the best and brightest engineering minds in the world are employed to work for the advancement of computer technology. It is impossible to really know what kind of breakthroughs could be brewing at any one of those companies. The evidence does seems stacked against Moore's Law, but many electrical and computer engineers will not easily accept its end. I am no industry expert or engineer of cutting edge transistor based technology, but I know that it's often the times when progress seems most difficult that the biggest advances occur.
Until next time,
-Ian "E Money" Wichmann
Maybe it's just my computer screen, but it's kind of hard to see those graphs. But other than that, I'm proud of you for going your entire post without making a "Need 'Moore' transistors" pun.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the Green Arrow with the pictures. They seem to be pretty dark. But on a positive note, it is nice that you do have graphs included in this post.
ReplyDeleteThe first graph is unreadable especially when made large. I think that a single phosphorus atom is the smallest it can go because there are atoms that are smaller than phosphorus. But I do understand what you are saying that eventually we will use the smallest known atom. I'm a computer scientist so I understand the need of better computers and have heard of Moore's Law several times.
ReplyDeleteThis is super interesting and even more enticing to think about when it comes down to advancement of technology. It does always seem that technology is advancing very rapidly but will it someday come to a halt? I guess only time will tell.
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