There had been rumblings in the IT industry that the Moore’s Law in the chip industry is now going to be invalid. As most of you know that the Moore’s Law is:
The most popular formulation is of the doubling of the number of transistors on integrated circuits every 18 months. At the end of the 1970s, Moore’s Law became known as the limit for the number of transistors on the most complex chips. However, it is also common to cite Moore’s Law to refer to the rapidly continuing advance in computing power per unit cost, because increase in transistor count is also a rough measure of computer processing power.
But looks like the man was a genius. Or was he plain lucky? Guess we will never know.
Intel Corp. and IBM have announced one of the biggest advances in transistors in four decades, overcoming a frustrating obstacle by ensuring microchips can get even smaller and more powerful.
The breakthrough, achieved via separate research efforts and announced Friday, involves using an exotic new material to make transistors — the tiny switches that are the building blocks of microchips.
The technology involves a layer of material that regulates the flow of electricity through transistors.
“At the transistor level, we haven’t changed the basic materials since the 1960s. So it’s a real big breakthrough,” said Dan Hutcheson, head of VLSI Research, an industry consultancy.
“Moore’s Law was coming to a grinding halt,” he added, referring to the industry maxim laid down by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years.
The result of Moore’s Law has been smaller and faster chips and their spread into a wide array of consumer products that now account for the bulk of the industry’s $250 billion in annual sales.
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