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Moore's law is about improvements in cost-benefits that occur at a steady rate, and CPUs have not simply been shrinking transistors, but adding instructions, re

by nwah1 9y ago

Moore's law is about improvements in cost-benefits that occur at a steady rate, and CPUs have not simply been shrinking transistors, but adding instructions, reorganizing the architectures, moving motherboard components on-die, etc. PV panels have had certain types of regular process improvements. My understanding is that they try to add layers that use more of the energy of the light spectrum. Conversion efficiency improvements are responsible for more of the cost-benefit improvements than taylorist improvements via economies of scale. And those improvements have been occurring at a remarkably steady rate for five decades.

Iv 9y ago
Moore's law simply says that the density of transistors in CPUs doubles ever two years. It was an observation over the past, and M.Moore (who is still alive and often criticizes Moore's law) famously said in 1965 that he did not see a reason for it to stop for another decade. Later Intel said that performances (not just transistor density) would double every 18 months, which is different. Moore's law talks about transistors and we arguably have finally reached a point where it slowed, after having outlived its initial prediction for several decades. Moore's law, though, was more than an extrapolation of the past: it was an understanding of the causes for the speed of the trend and an examination of what the future may provide by someone who understood the manufacturing process behind CPUs. Moore knew about CPUs, he was talking about CPUs and transistors. His "law" holds no predictive power whatsoever for PV. You will have to find a specialist about the processes to know if there are any predictable roadbloacks ahead.