Current and inspiring, Moore's Law celebrates 50 years

The month of April marks the 50th anniversary of the so-called “Moore's Law" one of the main paradigms of technological development. The postulate predicts that at each cycle, which can vary from 18 to 24 months, the processing capacity of computers doubles, while costs remain constant. The theory wasfirst published in 1965 in Electronic Magazine by the engineer Gordon Moore, 3 years before becoming one of the founders of Intel.

Moore noted that the transistors - Or building blocks fundamental of the microprocessor and the digital age – would reduce in cost and increase in performance at an exponential rate. He probably did not imagine that the idea he had presented would become a paradigm that would spur the next half century – at least – of transformational technological change.

Initially, Moore's Law it was just an observation, but it eventually became a goal for the semiconductor industries, causing the industry to spend a lot of resources in order to achieve Moore's performance predictions. This fact demonstrates how important Moore's postulate is, as he was the protagonist of the very accelerated development in the hardware and at increasingly affordable costs.

Many devices that people use daily are powered by microprocessors made up of transistors. When we observe the development of these components, we observe that they have undergone a drastic reduction in price and an increase in performance and efficiency in energy consumption, as proposed by Moore's Law. In this way, they have become an increasingly indispensable part of everyday life.

In recent years, phones and watches have become smart, and cars have become mobile computers. This is mainly due to the evolution of these components. Ohe first semiconductor transistors were the size of the eraser at the end of a pencil. As a result of Moore's Law, more than six million of today's tri-gate transistors would fit in the period at the end of this sentence. To get a scalar sense of how significant these transformations can be, look at this data:

• If an Intel-based Android* phone were built on 1971 technology, only the phone's microprocessor would fill a car seat. try to take one Selfie thereby.
• Compared to Intel's first microprocessor, the Intel® 4004, the current 14nm processor provides 3500 times the performance and 90.000 times the efficiency, for 1/60.000 the cost.
• Today's transistors are invisible to the naked eye. To see a single transistor, you would have to increase the chip's normal size to the size of a house.

But knowing that the Moore's Law is an inspiration and not a law of nature, it is a fact that andit became possible thanks to an immense collective effort of people extending the fundamental laws of physics. Allowing an exercise in creativity here, let us imagine for a moment what the world would be like if the development of other areas obeyed the Moore's Law.

• In the Automotive Industry
  • If the fuel efficiency of automobiles improved in the same way, a person could easily drive a car for a lifetime on a single tank of gas. New car, 40 years old? Maybe you only need a quarter of a tank.
  • At the rate at which transistors shrank, your car would be the size of an ant. You could keep a bunch of spare tires in your shirt pocket.
• In Civil Construction
  • If a skyscraper were to be reduced in price at the pace of Moore's Law, a person could buy one for less than the cost of a PC today. Rooftop supercomputer for anyone? And if a skyscraper increased in height at the pace of Moore's Law, it would be 35 times the height of Mount Everest.
  • If house prices dropped at the same rate as transistors, a person could buy a house for the price of a candy bar. Delight!
• On Air Transport
  • the space program Apollo it cost 25 billion dollars to land a man on the moon. If the price were reduced at the pace of Moore's Law, the program would currently cost about the same as a small private plane.
  • The trip to the moon in 1969 took three days. If Moore's Law were applied to space travel, that trip would now take a minute.
  • A trip from New Zealand to New York would take as long as it takes to put on a seat belt. Not a peanut on this flight?

Moore's Law: Present and future

Naturally, there is the question of whether Moore's Law is still in effect and how much longer it will continue to do so. It is unreasonable to assume that the evolution of technology will stop, but the pace can change, either up or down. Companies may consider that the investment to maintain this pace is too high and no longer pays off; at the same time, competitiveness through innovation can accelerate this pace, leveraging investment.

There is also the problem of physics, as there is a limit to how much you can shrink transistors and implant them on your chips. Recently, Intel announced that it intends not to use silicon in its 7 nanometer processors, scheduled for 2017. The change in materials, the evolution of nanotechnology are factors that can shake the industry and put the Moore's Law in the past. But the similarity with which it guides technological progress is still relevant today.

Moore's Law: Inspiration and the Limits of Man

The omnipresent spirit of innovation made possible by Moore's Law continues to transform not only the technology industry, but also the world we live in. Young creators, inspired inventors, aspiring scientists, doctors and many others continue to amaze the world with ideas and discoveries whose only frontier seems to be man's endless ability to use imagination.

PS: Before Moore, the first to venture an evolutionary theory about hardware had been Alan Turing that in 1950 that predicted that at the turn of the century we would have computers with memory in the house of 1 GB. Turing is considered one of the fathers of information technology and had part of his story told in the feature film “The Imitation Game” (The Imitation Game, USA, 2014), a must-see for anyone who enjoys cinema and technology. Here's our tip!