Gordon Moore on 40 years of his processor law

No_Style · Apr 7, 2005, 10:37 PM

Gordon Moore is one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley and one of the few still alive.

His famous dictum turns 40 on April 19. He spoke to reporters recently about the electronics industry's progress, artificial intelligence, the emergence of China and the early days of the industry.

Q: So where did Moore's Law come from?
Moore: For their 35th anniversary issue, the editor of Electronics magazine asked me to write an article on the future of semiconductor components for the next 10 years. I wanted to get across the idea that integrated circuits will be the way to make things cheap. So I made this extrapolation. The biggest circuit available then had something like 30 components on it. I looked historically and saw we'd kind of gone four, eight, sixteen and we were about doubling every year. I didn't think it was going to be especially accurate; I just was trying to get the idea across that things are going to be significantly more complex and a lot cheaper, and it turned out to be much more accurate that I had any reason to believe.

One of my friends, I believe, professor Carver Mead from Cal Tech, called this Moore's Law. The name stuck. I couldn't utter it for about 20 years, 'til finally I got reasonably comfortable with it.

In 1975, I updated Moore's Law, and we've been on that pretty much ever since. We're actually a little ahead of that, we're doubling in less than 24 months these days.
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Read More/Source: C|Net Tech News

Apr 7, 2005, 10:37 PM	#1
No_Style Styleless Wonder Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Ottawa, Ontario Posts: 6,034 Rep Power: 0	Gordon Moore on 40 years of his processor law Gordon Moore is one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley and one of the few still alive. His famous dictum turns 40 on April 19. He spoke to reporters recently about the electronics industry's progress, artificial intelligence, the emergence of China and the early days of the industry. Q: So where did Moore's Law come from? Moore: For their 35th anniversary issue, the editor of Electronics magazine asked me to write an article on the future of semiconductor components for the next 10 years. I wanted to get across the idea that integrated circuits will be the way to make things cheap. So I made this extrapolation. The biggest circuit available then had something like 30 components on it. I looked historically and saw we'd kind of gone four, eight, sixteen and we were about doubling every year. I didn't think it was going to be especially accurate; I just was trying to get the idea across that things are going to be significantly more complex and a lot cheaper, and it turned out to be much more accurate that I had any reason to believe. One of my friends, I believe, professor Carver Mead from Cal Tech, called this Moore's Law. The name stuck. I couldn't utter it for about 20 years, 'til finally I got reasonably comfortable with it. In 1975, I updated Moore's Law, and we've been on that pretty much ever since. We're actually a little ahead of that, we're doubling in less than 24 months these days. _______________ Read More/Source: C\|Net Tech News __________________ "The Best Style Is No Style" Specifications Here