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#CheerfulCharts #10: Moore's law

09 Oct 2024 | Science Notes

In 1965, engineer and Intel co-founder Gordon Moore sketched a few data points on a chart and offered a bold projection: the number of transistors that could be fit on a single computer chip would roughly double every two years. He qualified his prediction: probably only for another decade or so. And yet the relationship has held up for 60 years, a major reason why we can carry what would have been a supercomputer in 1975 around in a phone today… and afford to (even if we often then put it to uses that would be hard to justify, including famously flinging misspelled insults at total strangers or searching for cats that look like Hitler). In one of the most remarkable testaments to human ingenuity, scientists and engineers have continued to refine computing capacity beyond any conceivable boundaries. This process has led to astonishing advances in processor power, data storage, numerical computation, clock speed, machine learning, artificial intelligence, global warming scenarios, internet monitoring, round-the-clock surveillance, state control of misinfo – hey wait, something went wrong somewhere. OK maybe the technologies get put to a bad use sometimes, but there are also good applications, like the ability of people like us to communicate with people like you and push back against climate doomerism with our Cheerful Charts including, this week, Moore’s Law.

The folks at Our World in Data reproduced the original graph of Moore’s law from 1965, before all this progress let anyone with taste do a compelling graphic:

Then they compared it to the march of progress of computer chips (and graphics) through the present:

Notice that the vertical axis of transistor goes up exponentially: each same-length interval represents a doubling not a mere linear step.

Will it continue forever? No, because no exponential process can. But is it slowing down? Perhaps. But it’s not stopping. We marvel today at how primitive the computers were just 20 years ago, and wonder how we got anything done on the miracles of 1984 with their 256k floppy drives. So the computers of 20 years hence may seem otherworldly when they arrive and clunky five years later. But those machines will need power around the clock and renewables won’t cut it.

So if the new world of processing power comes upon us, it’s going to need a lot of electricity, which is why the computing world is talking about nuclear, gas and even coal. This crowd knows what works and what doesn’t. And Moore power to them.

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