I have come in for some criticism of how I understand and try to explain Moore’s Law.
The original "law" was an observation in a 1964 Electronics Magazine article, and applied only to silicon chips. It was that the density of such chips could double every year or 18 months for as far as Moore could see.
What I have written is that this set something far more profound in motion. The same kinds of Moore’s Law improvements have since come to disk storage, optical storage, fiber transmission, even radios. And these breakthroughs can be combined to create even more exponential improvements in the future.
Moore’s Law has become an unstoppable force, spreading exponential improvements around the world, turning economics on its head, accelerating at a faster-and-faster rate.
Nothing can stop it. No government, no company, nothing. And we have further proof today, from the source. From Intel.
Intel has combined silicon and laser technology, creating a chip with tightly-directed wireless communications built-into it. (The actual scientific breakthrough behind the recent announcement came last year. The picture is from the press kit of that announcement.)
What this means is that future computers won’t need wires, and data travelling between chips will no longer act as a bottleneck. It also means that communications gear can be much faster, cheaper, smaller, and cost-effective, and that the bottlneck known as "switching" between your broadband signal and the larger network need no longer exist.
It will take time to get this into products, but Intel’s recent financial setbacks give it an enormous financial incentive to accelerate that. The discipline of the market will force the company’s hand.
I have said this before, and I will say it again. No monopoly, no government, can stand before the force of Moore’s Law. In all its permutations, in all the ways it builds upon itself in unexpected ways. The Great Race of the 21st century is between the environmental destruction created by the early 20th century and the computing breakthroughs of the late 20th century, which Gordon Mooore helped set in motion.
Ray Kurzweil wrote in 2001 that he believed Moore’s Law was part of a more general phenomenon, which he dubbed the Law of Accelerating Returns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_chage#Kurzweil_and_The_Law_of_Accelerating_Returns
Exponential growth usually can’t be sustained unless the rate of change has no upper bound. This has led some to postulate a Technical Singularity, beyond which we can’t really predict what we and our technology will be like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
There’s some really interesting speculative fiction written around the idea of accelerating returns, but nobody knows for certain how it will unfold for us.
It’s really quite exciting to ponder, until you notice that we’re not spending much of that effort (yet) on making things sustainable.
Ray Kurzweil wrote in 2001 that he believed Moore’s Law was part of a more general phenomenon, which he dubbed the Law of Accelerating Returns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_chage#Kurzweil_and_The_Law_of_Accelerating_Returns
Exponential growth usually can’t be sustained unless the rate of change has no upper bound. This has led some to postulate a Technical Singularity, beyond which we can’t really predict what we and our technology will be like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
There’s some really interesting speculative fiction written around the idea of accelerating returns, but nobody knows for certain how it will unfold for us.
It’s really quite exciting to ponder, until you notice that we’re not spending much of that effort (yet) on making things sustainable.