5 ms·

Before anyone says that Moore's law is dead, remember that transistors are still getting smaller and more dense (not to mention more expensive, which was anothe

Before anyone says that Moore's law is dead, remember that transistors are still getting smaller and more dense (not to mention more expensive, which was another part of his prediction). In every thread people confuse Moore's law with Dennard scaling (which states roughly that, as transistors get smaller, their power density stays constant, so that the power use stays in proportion with area; both voltage and current scale (downward) with length.)

coffeebeqn 4y ago
Moore himself said (mentioned in the link) that the “law” was just supposed to convey that the way to cheaper electronics at the time was to focus on transistors, I don’t think he ever meant it was supposed to be a law of physics that stays true 50 years or 100 years later. In fact he said it would be true for 10 years
- junon 4y ago
  This is interesting, I never knew this. Is there somewhere I can read more on his thoughts? I was under the impression (naively so) that this was some invariant that had been somehow proven to an extent.
  - philiplu 4y ago
    I searched on "Moore's law is not a law" and found [1], "Moore’s Law Is Not Really A Law But It Is Still Obeyed", from someone who was a semiconductor engineer at Intel 40 years ago. As he says, Moore's law was more a roadmap than a law. Companies strove to keep it going for fear their competitors would succeed while they failed; sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. [1] https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/moores-law-is-not-really-a-law-but-it-is-still-obeyed-2e0c2b596525 https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/moores-law-is-not-real...
terafo 4y ago
Dennard scaling died 2 decades ago. Moore's law is dead for less than a dexade. It took 4 years for density to double(from N7 to N3). And with density doubled the cost. It will get only worse from here.
panick21_ 4y ago
Actually Moores law is dead. His prediction was not transistors would get smaller. His prediction was initial that for 10 years was that density would double every year. And then later that it would double every 18 month. And this held longer then even he thought. But it has ended. While things still get denser, its no longer on that same trend. This interview with Moore explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcLzokagAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcLzokagAw History by Cantrill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM9h89Vo_Qo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM9h89Vo_Qo David Patterson perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFT54hO1X8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFT54hO1X8M Opposing point of view Jim Keller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc Patterson response to Keller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz0eJA1TP3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz0eJA1TP3Y There are talks by David Patterson, Jim Keller and
- CyberDildonics 4y ago
  density would double every year I'm not a physicist, but I think they need to get smaller to do that.
  - blihp 4y ago
    They haven't been doing so at that rate for a very long time.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Smaller transistors is one way to get more transistors per chip. Chips could also get bigger, or the transistors could be packed in more densely (my VLSI is rusty, but not all transistors are minimally sized; a wider transistor can be used to push more power for example).
    - CyberDildonics 4y ago
      And how sustainable is making chips bigger or packing transistors more densely without making them smaller as a solution to getting chips with more transistors?
hedgehog 4y ago
Moore's Law has been dead for a while. The most common confusion I see is that people don't understand he was referring to economical scaling. These days we're getting more density and bigger chips but prices are going up a lot too. More for more instead of more for less.
- xipix 4y ago
  Prices of the chips may be rising, but power usage is falling and in the end, that's often the bigger cost.
fwlr 4y ago
Eve if Moore’s law is dead, it lived way longer than any law claiming a doubling every two years has a right to. Compound annual growth of 41% per year for 40+ years is astonishing.
stevenjgarner 4y ago
I think the spirit of Moore's Law (the context in which it is most often used) is better referred to as the Law of Accelerating Returns [1] [2] (e.g. by Ray Kurzweil). Moore's Law is a sub-section (in time and technology) of the Law of Accelerating Returns. [1] https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns [2] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-05642-4_16 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-05642-4_...
- dahart 4y ago
  Naw, this is from a quarter century after Moore’s predictions, and Moore’s law had already started slowing down by then. Kurzweil was also selling snake oil (immortality) here, and the proof is in the final figure in the article, it’s 100% misleading and has left me with mistrust for all the rest of what Kurzweil said. Why did he leave out all the population data between 1920 and 2000, data which we have available at our fingertips? Because then he couldn’t have drawn a completely fabricated plot showing continuous lifespan acceleration, acceleration that doesn’t exist. Why does he conflate life expectancy with longevity to imply to the reader that genetics are improving as opposed to, say, the truth about poverty, wars, sanitation, and medicine? Because then it wouldn’t tell an amazing sounding (but completely untrue) story about humans being able to live longer and see the “singularity”. This article proved to me that Kurzweil is a charlatan, which is disappointing because I loved his keynote at Siggraph right around this time where he was pitching these ideas.
  - stevenjgarner 4y ago
    Really? I thought the exponential growth of calculations per second per dollar was rather well-established at least from 1900 through 2010 [1], a period of time that is much broader than Moore's Law? [1] https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*vlmZ_Y3a-PGsK0SJImZWaA.png https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*vlmZ_Y3a-PGsK0S...
    - dahart 4y ago
      Yes really, there is no law of accelerating returns as far as I’m concerned. Kurzweil clearly tried to opportunistically generalize Moore’s law and take credit for what he thought was a bigger idea, but sadly doesn’t produce a compelling argument, given that 1) Moore’s law died a decade ago, it no longer holds, and cost of calculations per second is no longer decreasing exponentially, and 2) Kurzweil claimed that things like US GDP and human life expectancy are evidence of his so-called law, and these claims are clearly bullshit. And not just wrong but intentionally misleading, that’s the part that bothers me. Did you look at the final figure? It’s not possible to make that diagram or write the accompanying text without knowing you’re lying. How about the first or second ones, wtf even are they? The majority of plots in Kurzweil’s piece, some 20-odd figures, are direct byproducts of Moore’s law from after Moore observed/predicted it, and nothing more. In case you missed it, my point is not that flops didn’t increased exponentially for most of the last century, it’s that Kurzweil wasn’t the first to observe it, and didn’t add anything rigorous to what Moore & others had already done. Kurzweil only made a mockery of it by fabricating some of the data and using the larger argument to claim we’re headed toward immortality, joining an illustrious list of people who get attention by hawking the fountain of youth. BTW feel free to re-read Kurzweil’s predictions about computation growth in the article and ask yourself whether they’re true. One of his scheduled predictions is up this year. He’s off by a few orders of magnitude according to his own definitions, and furthermore his definitions are off by a few more orders of magnitude according to other researchers, and on top of that his claim that enough flops equal human brain capability are, to date, false. These things put the remainder of his predictions really far behind schedule, and possibly slipping at an exponential rate, which kinda undermines the whole point, right?

coffeebeqn 4y ago

Moore himself said (mentioned in the link) that the “law” was just supposed to convey that the way to cheaper electronics at the time was to focus on transistors, I don’t think he ever meant it was supposed to be a law of physics that stays true 50 years or 100 years later. In fact he said it would be true for 10 years

junon 4y ago
This is interesting, I never knew this. Is there somewhere I can read more on his thoughts? I was under the impression (naively so) that this was some invariant that had been somehow proven to an extent.
- philiplu 4y ago
  I searched on "Moore's law is not a law" and found [1], "Moore’s Law Is Not Really A Law But It Is Still Obeyed", from someone who was a semiconductor engineer at Intel 40 years ago. As he says, Moore's law was more a roadmap than a law. Companies strove to keep it going for fear their competitors would succeed while they failed; sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. [1] https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/moores-law-is-not-really-a-law-but-it-is-still-obeyed-2e0c2b596525 https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/moores-law-is-not-real...

terafo 4y ago

Dennard scaling died 2 decades ago. Moore's law is dead for less than a dexade. It took 4 years for density to double(from N7 to N3). And with density doubled the cost. It will get only worse from here.

panick21_ 4y ago

Actually Moores law is dead. His prediction was not transistors would get smaller. His prediction was initial that for 10 years was that density would double every year. And then later that it would double every 18 month. And this held longer then even he thought. But it has ended. While things still get denser, its no longer on that same trend. This interview with Moore explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcLzokagAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcLzokagAw History by Cantrill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM9h89Vo_Qo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM9h89Vo_Qo David Patterson perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFT54hO1X8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFT54hO1X8M Opposing point of view Jim Keller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc Patterson response to Keller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz0eJA1TP3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz0eJA1TP3Y There are talks by David Patterson, Jim Keller and

CyberDildonics 4y ago
density would double every year I'm not a physicist, but I think they need to get smaller to do that.
- blihp 4y ago
  They haven't been doing so at that rate for a very long time.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Smaller transistors is one way to get more transistors per chip. Chips could also get bigger, or the transistors could be packed in more densely (my VLSI is rusty, but not all transistors are minimally sized; a wider transistor can be used to push more power for example).
  - CyberDildonics 4y ago
    And how sustainable is making chips bigger or packing transistors more densely without making them smaller as a solution to getting chips with more transistors?

hedgehog 4y ago

Moore's Law has been dead for a while. The most common confusion I see is that people don't understand he was referring to economical scaling. These days we're getting more density and bigger chips but prices are going up a lot too. More for more instead of more for less.

xipix 4y ago
Prices of the chips may be rising, but power usage is falling and in the end, that's often the bigger cost.

fwlr 4y ago

Eve if Moore’s law is dead, it lived way longer than any law claiming a doubling every two years has a right to. Compound annual growth of 41% per year for 40+ years is astonishing.

stevenjgarner 4y ago

I think the spirit of Moore's Law (the context in which it is most often used) is better referred to as the Law of Accelerating Returns [1] [2] (e.g. by Ray Kurzweil). Moore's Law is a sub-section (in time and technology) of the Law of Accelerating Returns. [1] https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns [2] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-05642-4_16 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-05642-4_...

dahart 4y ago
Naw, this is from a quarter century after Moore’s predictions, and Moore’s law had already started slowing down by then. Kurzweil was also selling snake oil (immortality) here, and the proof is in the final figure in the article, it’s 100% misleading and has left me with mistrust for all the rest of what Kurzweil said. Why did he leave out all the population data between 1920 and 2000, data which we have available at our fingertips? Because then he couldn’t have drawn a completely fabricated plot showing continuous lifespan acceleration, acceleration that doesn’t exist. Why does he conflate life expectancy with longevity to imply to the reader that genetics are improving as opposed to, say, the truth about poverty, wars, sanitation, and medicine? Because then it wouldn’t tell an amazing sounding (but completely untrue) story about humans being able to live longer and see the “singularity”. This article proved to me that Kurzweil is a charlatan, which is disappointing because I loved his keynote at Siggraph right around this time where he was pitching these ideas.
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  Really? I thought the exponential growth of calculations per second per dollar was rather well-established at least from 1900 through 2010 [1], a period of time that is much broader than Moore's Law? [1] https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*vlmZ_Y3a-PGsK0SJImZWaA.png https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*vlmZ_Y3a-PGsK0S...
  - dahart 4y ago
    Yes really, there is no law of accelerating returns as far as I’m concerned. Kurzweil clearly tried to opportunistically generalize Moore’s law and take credit for what he thought was a bigger idea, but sadly doesn’t produce a compelling argument, given that 1) Moore’s law died a decade ago, it no longer holds, and cost of calculations per second is no longer decreasing exponentially, and 2) Kurzweil claimed that things like US GDP and human life expectancy are evidence of his so-called law, and these claims are clearly bullshit. And not just wrong but intentionally misleading, that’s the part that bothers me. Did you look at the final figure? It’s not possible to make that diagram or write the accompanying text without knowing you’re lying. How about the first or second ones, wtf even are they? The majority of plots in Kurzweil’s piece, some 20-odd figures, are direct byproducts of Moore’s law from after Moore observed/predicted it, and nothing more. In case you missed it, my point is not that flops didn’t increased exponentially for most of the last century, it’s that Kurzweil wasn’t the first to observe it, and didn’t add anything rigorous to what Moore & others had already done. Kurzweil only made a mockery of it by fabricating some of the data and using the larger argument to claim we’re headed toward immortality, joining an illustrious list of people who get attention by hawking the fountain of youth. BTW feel free to re-read Kurzweil’s predictions about computation growth in the article and ask yourself whether they’re true. One of his scheduled predictions is up this year. He’s off by a few orders of magnitude according to his own definitions, and furthermore his definitions are off by a few more orders of magnitude according to other researchers, and on top of that his claim that enough flops equal human brain capability are, to date, false. These things put the remainder of his predictions really far behind schedule, and possibly slipping at an exponential rate, which kinda undermines the whole point, right?