Moore's Law Finite, Says Moore

All geeks share common knowlege about a few key things. They know that dating isn't their best thing. They can rattle off the names of all the Star Trek series without difficulty. And all of them know the old saw Moore's Law. Conceived by Gordon Moore in 1965 it is the observation that that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling approximately every two years.

It affects non geeks in that every two years computers double in power while remaining at the same price point, which means that every two years you buy a new computer because you resent your crappy old one that doesn't do anything any more.

On Monday Gordon Moore spoke at IDF with the comforting news that no, it can't keep going on like that forever. He says it will start slowing down in about ten or fifteen years. The brakes are going to be put on not by the limits of human ingenuity but by, as Stephen Hawking put it, "the speed of light and the fundamental nature of matter." In other words you can scale a chip down to the size of a few atoms but after that, where do you go? One atom? Half an atom? Game over.

There has been talk of quantum computing, of course. The physics of very small particles poses some interesting applications in the computing world. A circuit in a computer is either on, or it's off. That's binary. But in quantum physics it's possible for a particle to be both at the same time. If clever chip designers could harness that l'il nugget, computers would become so powerful that we might as well just hand the world over to COLOSSUS and mix ourselves a pitcher of mint juleps.

In any event, it's been quite a ride in the technology sector for the past 40 years, and maybe it's time to stop long enough to let some passengers off to stretch their legs. Instead of the drive to improve technology, we can focus on USING it for something.