Re: Moore's Law was: Re: [sl4] Call for information: Moore's Law

From: CyTG (cytg.net@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Jul 30 2008 - 02:16:10 MDT


>From the article.

Moore himself has noted:

"I never said 18 months. I said one year, and then two years ... Moore's Law
has been the name given to everything that changes exponentially. I saw, if
Gore invented the Internet, I invented the exponential" (Yang, 2000).

- That is just priceless

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 10:10 AM, CyTG <cytg.net@gmail.com> wrote:

> Indeed. We had sorta the same debate a month back or so; was mores law a
> self fulfilling prophecy or not. I vote not.
> Looking at the graphics and timeframe around pentium-1 to pentium-3 and
> ppro, I remember those days as Intel being a monopoly, it would dish out new
> chips roughly 10-20% faster than the previous generation for a hefty
> premium. You can do that when you're a monopoly.
> But then competition came along and the situation changed, the race was on
> again (the 1GHz race), and unfortunatly these graphs dont show recent events
> (Pentium 4 and upwards).
> I think mores law is a rough estimate wich hold its own while certain
> social variables are intact, but its certainly not a "self fulfilling
> prophecy".
> Can you think up a company that would rather compete with mores law than
> with the competitor next door?
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 6:48 AM, Harvey Newstrom <mail@harveynewstrom.com>wrote:
>
>> CyTG wrote,
>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law>
>>> with nice graphics and all!
>>>
>>
>> Thanks for the link, but I am already aware of Wikipedia.
>>
>> I prefer the graphics in "The Lives and Death of Moore's Law" <
>> http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/tuomi/index.html>.
>> These graphs look random, with no upward trend or exponential curve:
>>
>> Figure 1: Prices and Quantities of 16-kilobit DRAM chips
>> Figure 2: Percentage difference in expected number of transistors in Intel
>> microprocessors
>> Figure 3: Number of transistors on Intel microprocessors
>> Figure 4: Desktop computer processor speed
>> Figure 5: Processor performance in millions of instructins (MIPS) for
>> Intel processors
>> Figure 6: Median price for desktop computers sold in the U.S.
>> Figure 7: Percent change of price index for memory chips from previous
>> year
>> Figure 8: Average change in PC price indexes
>>
>> Quoted from the article:
>>
>> "A simple test for the validity of the Moore's Law can be done by charting
>> the number of transistors on microprocessor chips. This chart is, basically,
>> the one that is usually shown with the claim that it proves that the number
>> of transistors doubles roughly every 18 months. The results can be seen in
>> Figure 3...."
>>
>> <http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/tuomi/index.html#fig3>
>>
>> "As can be seen from Figure 3, the number of transistors has not doubled
>> very regularly. During the first decade of microprocessors, the doubling
>> rate was approximately 22 months but also very irregular. After the
>> introduction of the 80386 processor family, the doubling speed was closer to
>> 33 months. During this period, the number of transistors jumped from
>> 275,000, on the Intel 80386 chips in 1988 to 1.4 million transistors on the
>> 80486 SL chips, at the end of 1992. In the Pentium, Pentium Pro and Pentium
>> II processor families the transistor count doubled roughly at a rate of 54
>> months. Strictly speaking, the transistor counts, however, have changed
>> irregularly and the mentioned doubling times are based on statistical
>> trends. Since late 1999, Intel has not included transistor counts in its
>> processor summaries. In October 1999, Intel Pentium III Xeon and Mobile
>> Pentium III processors had some 28 million transistors. In July 2001,
>> Pentium 4 had about 42 million transistors...."
>>
>> Although technology is roughly getting faster all the time, it is doing so
>> in fits and starts as new products emerge. There is no predictable pattern
>> or discernable rate at which this occurs. Moore's Law is a rough trend, but
>> not very accurate at all.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Harvey Newstrom <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
>> CISSP CISA CISM CIFI GSEC IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP
>>
>>
>>
>



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