Moore's Law

Moore's law is a rule about computer hardware that was first introduced by Intel's co-founder, Gordon E. Moore, in 1965. The law states that the number of transistors that can placed on an integrated circuit cheapily will double twelve months. Currently, data density has been doubling every 18 months, which is the current definition of the law according to this site. This means that the speed, memory and efficiency of the computer increases, while the cost and power consumption decreases. Moore argued that "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year" (Jon Stokes 2008). Theorists predict that this law cannot hold true for more than a decade without redesigning the hardware. As the number of transistors in a circuit continues to increase, the amount of heat they give off increases as well and may require some sort of active cooling system (Stokes 2008). Another reason the rate may not increase in the future is because most business do not need that much more power. They can survive with what is currently out there. If the transistors keep on getting smaller in order to produce more, they will become to small to even see, develop or work with. It will be impossible for scientist to design them any smaller. In order to keep adding transistors, scientists would need to design the chips differently, make sure that people still need more and make sure users can appreciate the changes. This coincides with futurists' theory that Moore's law will be applied to all technology in the future because integrated circuits will have been perfected, so scientists will just end up replacing the current system. This will lead to almost instantaneous improvement. It seems very plausible that soon the circuits will be impossible to improve and scientists will find another way to increase the speed of a computer. Some suggestions are even increasing the size of the chip, increasing the number of chips used, or even by spreading out or splitting the power that people have across different systems. It does mean that Moore's law will still be in affect, just applied to different technology.