3 ms·

Anyone have up to date data on the progress of Moore's law through today? All the stuff on google looks like it taps out in 2015 https://www.google.com/search

Anyone have up to date data on the progress of Moore's law through today? All the stuff on google looks like it taps out in 2015 https://www.google.com/search?q=moore+law+&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwicu9nQ9O3rAhUxPH0KHRb0Ci0Q2-cCegQIABAA&oq=moore+law+ https://www.google.com/search?q=moore+law+&tbm=isch&ved=2ahU...

rockostrich 6y ago
5 nm node products are being released to consumers this year so we're still on track. I think at this point the next node is always questionable because it takes a pretty big breakthrough in manufacturing techniques, resist chemistry, and node design to shave off another nanometer.
- jjcon 6y ago
  The 5nm nodes being released aren’t actually 5nm though right? That’s just the branding/marketing associated with them from what I’ve seen.
  - hyperpallium2 6y ago
    transistors/mm^2 seems like a harder-to-game metric, and more in line with Moore's Law. Though it was "number of components per integrated circuit" https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law So... larger chips areas could continue it... I've thought that huge wafers, at slower clocks, would make sense. In a PC, tablet or even phone, there is plenty of physical room. Not sure if the barrier is technical or just present usage and economics.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  "Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years" We are not on track, haven't been on track.
  - bryan0 6y ago
    Do you have graphs for this? a quick search shows that at least in some sectors they're still doubling every 2 years https://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/Transistor-Count-Trends-Continue-To-Track-With-Moores-Law/ https://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/Transistor-Count-T... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count#/media/File:Moore's_Law_Transistor_Count_1971-2018.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count#/media/File:M... https://medium.com/predict/moores-law-is-alive-and-well-eaa49a450188 https://medium.com/predict/moores-law-is-alive-and-well-eaa4...
gameswithgo 6y ago
The progress of Moore's Law no longer exists. It was a very specific claim that we have not managed to achieve for a while. People often use the phrase "Moore's Law" just to refer to the continuing shrinkage of transistors, though. Which I think is what you mean.
lmeyerov 6y ago
I did a variant for GPU land around AWS instance hour purchasing power for GPU TFLOPS + GPU RAM over the last 10 years: https://twitter.com/lmeyerov/status/1232937998464901120 https://twitter.com/lmeyerov/status/1232937998464901120 For context, the last entry is the T4 (aws g4dn), which is 12nm Not exactly doubling every two years, but not far off. Moore's Law is dead, long live Moore's Law!
blululu 6y ago
One thing that is maybe helpful to consider in the modern era is that Moore's law's meaning has unraveled as we have reached smaller scales (hence the basic arguments over what it even means). Originally the law relates to the transistor density of an IC, but this was strongly correlated with Power Consumption, Clock Speed, and a bunch of other metrics. As we reach smaller scales these parameters are no longer tightly coupled. I recall seeing a plot to the effect that Power Efficiency tapped out at 14 nm. Likewise clock speed has not been increasing at the original clip for the better part of a decade (it went up ~50% in 10 years, which in any other area of engineering would be astounding, but I could sure use a 32GHZ processor). Anyway, having trade offs makes things more interesting and perhaps we are going to see an era with more cleverness chip architecture soon.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  32 GHz would be fun. We'd have multiple clock pulses flowing around because the chip is larger than the clock's wavelength. And I'm not counting the circuit paths - this would be on a straight line of copper.
Veedrac 6y ago
Density on the leading node (CPU & GPU graphs): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NNOqbJfcISFyMd0EsSrhppW7PT6GCfnrVGhxhLA5PVw https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NNOqbJfcISFyMd0EsSrh... I've also got an NVIDIA performance graph, since GPUs scale well with transistors: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dukdlqkh-zPkhmjUVuULhlchASthibJBy34R_oB_lVQ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dukdlqkh-zPkhmjUVuUL...
ksec 6y ago
We are no longer doubling / 2x every 2 years. And hasn't been so for a few years now. But we are getting 1.8x. So not too bad. People will like to show you graphs, especially with 10 - 50 years time scale. Well you will still see a straight line, because only the end tip of that graph is beginning to curve. Assuming a perfect execution, TSMC will get you ~1.8x transistor density improvement every 2 years all the way till 2030. You may also want to read [1] David Kanter on Transistor Density. But TD;LR not all transistor shrink at the same ratio, 1.8x is the best case scenario. https://www.realworldtech.com/transistor-count-flawed-metric/ https://www.realworldtech.com/transistor-count-flawed-metric...

rockostrich 6y ago

5 nm node products are being released to consumers this year so we're still on track. I think at this point the next node is always questionable because it takes a pretty big breakthrough in manufacturing techniques, resist chemistry, and node design to shave off another nanometer.

jjcon 6y ago
The 5nm nodes being released aren’t actually 5nm though right? That’s just the branding/marketing associated with them from what I’ve seen.
- hyperpallium2 6y ago
  transistors/mm^2 seems like a harder-to-game metric, and more in line with Moore's Law. Though it was "number of components per integrated circuit" https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law So... larger chips areas could continue it... I've thought that huge wafers, at slower clocks, would make sense. In a PC, tablet or even phone, there is plenty of physical room. Not sure if the barrier is technical or just present usage and economics.
gameswithgo 6y ago
"Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years" We are not on track, haven't been on track.
- bryan0 6y ago
  Do you have graphs for this? a quick search shows that at least in some sectors they're still doubling every 2 years https://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/Transistor-Count-Trends-Continue-To-Track-With-Moores-Law/ https://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/Transistor-Count-T... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count#/media/File:Moore's_Law_Transistor_Count_1971-2018.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count#/media/File:M... https://medium.com/predict/moores-law-is-alive-and-well-eaa49a450188 https://medium.com/predict/moores-law-is-alive-and-well-eaa4...

gameswithgo 6y ago

The progress of Moore's Law no longer exists. It was a very specific claim that we have not managed to achieve for a while. People often use the phrase "Moore's Law" just to refer to the continuing shrinkage of transistors, though. Which I think is what you mean.

lmeyerov 6y ago

I did a variant for GPU land around AWS instance hour purchasing power for GPU TFLOPS + GPU RAM over the last 10 years: https://twitter.com/lmeyerov/status/1232937998464901120 https://twitter.com/lmeyerov/status/1232937998464901120 For context, the last entry is the T4 (aws g4dn), which is 12nm Not exactly doubling every two years, but not far off. Moore's Law is dead, long live Moore's Law!

blululu 6y ago

One thing that is maybe helpful to consider in the modern era is that Moore's law's meaning has unraveled as we have reached smaller scales (hence the basic arguments over what it even means). Originally the law relates to the transistor density of an IC, but this was strongly correlated with Power Consumption, Clock Speed, and a bunch of other metrics. As we reach smaller scales these parameters are no longer tightly coupled. I recall seeing a plot to the effect that Power Efficiency tapped out at 14 nm. Likewise clock speed has not been increasing at the original clip for the better part of a decade (it went up ~50% in 10 years, which in any other area of engineering would be astounding, but I could sure use a 32GHZ processor). Anyway, having trade offs makes things more interesting and perhaps we are going to see an era with more cleverness chip architecture soon.

rbanffy 6y ago
32 GHz would be fun. We'd have multiple clock pulses flowing around because the chip is larger than the clock's wavelength. And I'm not counting the circuit paths - this would be on a straight line of copper.

Veedrac 6y ago

Density on the leading node (CPU & GPU graphs): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NNOqbJfcISFyMd0EsSrhppW7PT6GCfnrVGhxhLA5PVw https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NNOqbJfcISFyMd0EsSrh... I've also got an NVIDIA performance graph, since GPUs scale well with transistors: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dukdlqkh-zPkhmjUVuULhlchASthibJBy34R_oB_lVQ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dukdlqkh-zPkhmjUVuUL...

ksec 6y ago

We are no longer doubling / 2x every 2 years. And hasn't been so for a few years now. But we are getting 1.8x. So not too bad. People will like to show you graphs, especially with 10 - 50 years time scale. Well you will still see a straight line, because only the end tip of that graph is beginning to curve. Assuming a perfect execution, TSMC will get you ~1.8x transistor density improvement every 2 years all the way till 2030. You may also want to read [1] David Kanter on Transistor Density. But TD;LR not all transistor shrink at the same ratio, 1.8x is the best case scenario. https://www.realworldtech.com/transistor-count-flawed-metric/ https://www.realworldtech.com/transistor-count-flawed-metric...