4 ms·

On the same podcast you can find David Patterson (known for writing some widely used computer architecture books), who disputes this claim. https://www.youtube

by mirker 5y ago

On the same podcast you can find David Patterson (known for writing some widely used computer architecture books), who disputes this claim. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naed4C4hfAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naed4C4hfAg At 1:20:00

someperson 5y ago
David Patterson is not disputing that there's decades left of transistor shrinking, he's just saying that the statement of "transistor count doubling every 2 years" doesn't hold up empirically. David Patterson is saying he considers Moore's Law is dead because the current state of say, "transistor count doubling every three years" doesn't match the Moore's Law exact statement. In other words, he is simply being very pedantic about his definition. I can see where he's coming from with that argument.
- vlovich123 5y ago
  Every 2 years
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Right. But it is no longer 2 years so it’s not Moore’s Law any more.
- mirker 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s irrelevant to look at changing timescale. If the law broke down to be 3 years, there isn’t any reason it won’t be 4, 5, or some other N years in the future.
- zsmi 5y ago
  It's more than that though as it's important to remember why Moore made his law in the first place. The rough organizational structure of a VLSI team that makes CPUs is the following pipeline: architecture team -> team that designs the circuits which implement the architecture -> team that manufactures the circuits The law was a message to the architecture team that by the time your architecture gets to manufacture you should expect there to be ~2x the number of transistor you have today available, and that should influence your decisions when making trade-offs. And that held for a long time. But, if you're in a CPU architecture team today, and you operate that way, you will likely be disappointed when it comes to manufacture. Therefore one should consider Moore's law dead when architecting CPUs.

by mirker 5y ago

someperson 5y ago

David Patterson is not disputing that there's decades left of transistor shrinking, he's just saying that the statement of "transistor count doubling every 2 years" doesn't hold up empirically. David Patterson is saying he considers Moore's Law is dead because the current state of say, "transistor count doubling every three years" doesn't match the Moore's Law exact statement. In other words, he is simply being very pedantic about his definition. I can see where he's coming from with that argument.

vlovich123 5y ago
Every 2 years
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Right. But it is no longer 2 years so it’s not Moore’s Law any more.
mirker 5y ago
I don’t think it’s irrelevant to look at changing timescale. If the law broke down to be 3 years, there isn’t any reason it won’t be 4, 5, or some other N years in the future.
zsmi 5y ago
It's more than that though as it's important to remember why Moore made his law in the first place. The rough organizational structure of a VLSI team that makes CPUs is the following pipeline: architecture team -> team that designs the circuits which implement the architecture -> team that manufactures the circuits The law was a message to the architecture team that by the time your architecture gets to manufacture you should expect there to be ~2x the number of transistor you have today available, and that should influence your decisions when making trade-offs. And that held for a long time. But, if you're in a CPU architecture team today, and you operate that way, you will likely be disappointed when it comes to manufacture. Therefore one should consider Moore's law dead when architecting CPUs.