3 ms·

Moravec's plots (from 1998!) are looking more and more like prophecies: https://www.jetpress.org/volume1/power_075.jpg https://www.jetpress.org/volume1/power_0

• BitwiseFool 3y ago
  What I find incredible about the progress of computing power is that there isn't anything that actually makes Moore's law a given. Engineers keep discovering advances in materials science and manufacturing that enable advancements on such a consistent pace. Is this a fluke? Luck? What enables this?
  • almostnormal 3y ago
    The market does. New stuff needs to be sold every year, and needs to be some amount faster to find a buyer. The cost of development is minimized while still reaching that goal, limiting the gain to no more than necessary.
    • Teever 3y ago
      That's like saying that the storke brings babies. It doesn't really answer the question, it just pushes it off for another day. Why don't we see exponential density growth in other products? What would that even look lke anyways?
  • jcranmer 3y ago
    Tens of billions of dollars of investment specifically to keep up with Moore's Law. It's basically akin to something like the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Program, just something initiated by private corporations rather than a government-directed investment program.
  • loandbehold 3y ago
    One thing driving Moore's law is the every generation of computers is used to design/simulate next generation. It's a positive feedback loop.
• semi-extrinsic 3y ago
  Except for the scale on the right. Which suggests that the nematode worm could be simulated reliably in 1998, but here we are in 2024 and still can't do it...