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Moores law has been the driving force of chip development? Prophet Moore predicted the future and now engineers start breaking the law? Isn't it the other way

Moores law has been the driving force of chip development? Prophet Moore predicted the future and now engineers start breaking the law? Isn't it the other way around that Moore made an observation about some effect that arose naturally? The formula was then called Moores law and its extrapolation had great predictive power for a long time. Similar effects occur all through industries when you start scaling things up. Quality will go up and cost per unit will go down. Often following a simple mathematical formula which describes the learning curve. In many technologies there is something called maturity where the straight line in the diagram starts to bend and approaches a technical limit. Markets overcome this a few times by changing the technological approach of solving a problem to an approach that has a better limit. This makes the general trend continue for decades... until the point where the next technology is so expensive that noone can afford it anymore. Thus far Silicon has won every round and chip manufacturing plants cost many billions of dollars.

wtallis 9y ago
Moore's law started out purely observational, but over the years it became a driving force of its own. Chip manufacturer's performance is judged against Moore's law. Roadmaps and timelines are drafted with Moore's law in mind. Massive research investments are undertaken with the expectation that they will enable a company to keep pace with Moore's law. Even if you're not doing chip design, anyone planning more than one chip product cycle into the future needs to take into account Moore's law. If you're building a hardware system or even a software project, ignoring Moore's law means that by the time you ship, your product might be cheaper than expected but also missing features that are now cost-effective.
- parrellel 9y ago
  Chip manufactures aren't going to be able to keep it up though. Look at all the problems getting a 10nm chip working, look at how those issues are going to get much worse at 7 and 3nm scales. Advances now seem more putting all the optimizations back in that they ignored in the quest for the physical bottom.

wtallis 9y ago

Moore's law started out purely observational, but over the years it became a driving force of its own. Chip manufacturer's performance is judged against Moore's law. Roadmaps and timelines are drafted with Moore's law in mind. Massive research investments are undertaken with the expectation that they will enable a company to keep pace with Moore's law. Even if you're not doing chip design, anyone planning more than one chip product cycle into the future needs to take into account Moore's law. If you're building a hardware system or even a software project, ignoring Moore's law means that by the time you ship, your product might be cheaper than expected but also missing features that are now cost-effective.

parrellel 9y ago
Chip manufactures aren't going to be able to keep it up though. Look at all the problems getting a 10nm chip working, look at how those issues are going to get much worse at 7 and 3nm scales. Advances now seem more putting all the optimizations back in that they ignored in the quest for the physical bottom.