Moore’s Law

Moore’s Law

Gordon Moore: co-founder of Intel

1965 - observed trends in industry - # of transistors on ICs vs. release dates:

Noticed number of transistors doubling with release of each new IC generation

release dates (separate generations) were all 18-24 months apart

Predicted that the number of transistors per chip would grow exponentially (double every 18 months)

Exponential improvement in technology is a natural trend: 

e.g. Steam Engines - Dynamo - Automobile

The level of integration of silicon technology as measured in terms of number of devices per IC

This comes about in two ways – size reduction of the individual devices and increase in the chip or dice size

As an indication of size reduction, it is interesting to note that feature size was measured in mils (1/1000 inch, 1 mil = 25 mm) up to early 1970’s, whereas now all features are measured in mm’s (1 mm = 10-6 m or 10-4 cm)

Semiconductor industry has followed this prediction with surprising accuracy

Amazing visionary – million transistor/chip barrier was crossed in the 1980’s.

2300 transistors, 1 MHz clock (Intel 4004) - 1971

42 Million, 2 GHz clock (Intel P4) - 2001

140 Million transistor (HP PA-8500)