Intel Celebrates 50 Years of Moore's Law
PRESS RELEASE
Published: 20th April 2015 | Source: Intel |
Intel Celebrates 50 Years of Moore's Law
Today marks the 50th anniversary of Moore's Law, an unspoken agreement between the electronics industry and the world economy that inspires engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs to think about what is possible. Moore's Law enables much of today's innovation - wearable technology, genomic sequencing, smart cities -and is helping industries tackle seemingly intractable problems and turning fantastic ideas into profitable business ventures. What will the next 50 years hold?
How long Will Moore's Law last?
Moore's law is an observation made by Gordon Moore in 1965 that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubled year on year and that this simple trend would continue for the foreseeable future. Now 50 years on Moore's Law still stands strong, but it definitely is slowing down.
Below is a picture of Intel's processing roadmap from 2011, showing that back then Intel expected to be using their 14nm process in 2013 and be on 10nm by 2015. As many of you guys know these estimates were proven wrong, as Intel's 14nm node suffered from yield problems so Intel were only able to release products on that node in late 2014, though we are yet to see an desktop or server grade products on this node.
Intel's 10nm process is now expected to be used in early 2017, a full 2 years after Intel's earlier estimates. Right now the biggest difficulty for Intel is how they will continue to shrink their manufacturing process further as the limits of Silicon is being reached at a rapid pace.
To put things into perspective, Intel's current 14nm node has a channel length which is less than 30 atoms across, which doesn't exactly leave Intel with much room to work with. Even more problematic is the fact that the properties of silicon changes when using it at much smaller sizes than are currently used, meaning that a different material will need to be used when going smaller than 10nm.
With transistors getting more and more difficult to make smaller, the likelihood of Moore's Law lasting another 50 years is very slim, but at least for now Intel thinks that Moore's Law still has a little more life in it.
You can join the discussion on the 50 years of Moore's Law on the OC3D Forums.
Now 50 years on how long will Moore's law keep on going? http://t.co/nRivkx2krV pic.twitter.com/3kcH2hKbNN
— OC3D (@OC3D) April 20, 2015Most Recent Comments
You'd swear it was a law of physics the way Intel talks about it.
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