Hey everyone! I’ve been looking into a concept that’s been pretty much the center of our semiconductor industry - Moore’s Law. Way back in 1965, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, said that we’d double the number of transistors on a chip about every two years, without increasing the production cost significantly. What it meant was that our computers would get smaller and faster while staying affordable.
It’s propelled some massive leaps in computing, boosted the efficiency of transistors in integrated circuits, and revolutionized our computers. All our gadgets, like smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles, have benefited from this. Even tech like weather forecasting and GPS have gotten pretty precise, thanks to Moore’s Law.
But it’s not just electronics. Sectors like transportation, health care, education, and energy production have all been uplifted by this tidal wave of computing power.
Now, here’s a bit of a buzzkill - we might be hitting a dead end with Moore’s Law. Some in the industry suggest that we could reach the physical limits of this principle in the 2020s. The problem is that as transistors shrink down, they start generating more heat which may affect the efficiency. Cooling down these tiny transistors would need more energy than what’s currently whizzing through them. Moore himself felt that we’d eventually hit a wall because everything’s made of atoms, after all.
Right now, chip makers are in a race against these physical limits, trying to build chips that are more powerful than ever. Take Intel for example - they’ve been trying to get a 7-nanometer chip off the ground, which is a pretty big deal.
So, if we’re facing the end of the line for Moore’s Law, where do we go from here? We’ll need to find new paths for ramping up our computing capabilities. How will the semiconductor industry evolve to tackle these new challenges? Let’s chat about this and delve into what the future might hold for our exciting field!
