Moore’s Law has been around since 1965 when Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore described it in a paper. Since that day, the law has been in full effect, and the number of transistors placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has roughly doubled every two years. It’s also a commonly held belief that chip performance doubles every 18 months.
But Moore’s Law won’t be true forever, and in the video above theoretical physicist Michio Kaku explains how it will collapse. And that collapse isn’t going to happen in some distant future, it is going to happen within the next decade.
The problem is one of finding a replacement for silicon coupled with the exponential nature of Moore’s Law. Quite simply, computing power cannot go on doubling every two years indefinitely.
The other issue is we are about to reach the limits of silicon. According to Kaku, once we get done to 5nm processes for chip production, silicon is finished. Any smaller and processors will just overheat.
Manufacturers such as Intel are continuing to find ways of pushing the boundaries of performance and maintaining Moore’s Law through innovation. That’s why we have multi-core chips, and most recently 3D transistors, but even they can only help so much.
Within the coming years a replacement for silicon chips will be required, with molecular, optical and quantum computers being potential successors, but also posing some very difficult problems to overcome if they succeed.
For now, just know that Moore’s Law is apparently coming to an end, and furthering computing power beyond silicon and that 5nm threshold has many scientists scratching their heads right now.
via big think
