Grazed from TheGuardian. Author: John Naughton.
Fifty years ago, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of the chip manufacturer Intel described a regularity he had observed that would one day make him a household name. What he had noticed was that the number of transistors that could be fitted on a given area of silicon doubled roughly every two years. And since transistor density is correlated with computing power, that meant that computing power doubled every two years. Thus was born Moore’s law.
At the beginning, few outside of the computer industry appreciated the significance of this. Humanity, it turns out, is not good at understanding the power of doubling – until it’s too late. Remember the fable about the emperor and the man who invented chess. When asked to name his reward, the inventor requested that one grain or rice be placed on the first square of the board, two on the second, four on the third and so on. The Emperor readily agrees, not realising that when you get to the 64th square the pile of rice required would be bigger than Mount Everest…
If you apply the metaphor to computing power, then we’re on the 25th square of the board – which explains why your smartphone has more processing power than even the big mainframe computers of yesteryear. It also explains why some writers (this columnist included) have often recycled a confident mantra: if all your problem requires for its solution is more computing power, then consider it solved – not tomorrow, perhaps, but in a few years at most. Moore’s law will take care of it…
Read more from the source @ www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/14/moores-law-no-more-computer-industry-processing-power-semiconductors
