Forget Moore's Law

Predictions

from the get-off-the-train dept

Just as the technology press is hopping up and down excitedly over the news that Gordon Moore sees his own law keeping up its pace for another decade, Michael S. Malone is telling us all the many reasons why we should forget Moore’s Law altogether. He says we have an unhealthy obsession with it (which is proven, partly, by the number of news sites that quickly ran with the latest prediction from Moore) that causes business people to lose site of everything else. He even blames it for the dot com collapse – saying people believed that if Moore’s Law continued (as it did) that the economy would grow with it. The real point is that Moore’s Law may have accelerated itself past its useful point. For most consumers and businesses, the idea of getting an ever more powerful computer every couple of years no longer makes sense. Moore’s Law may continue, but the rest of the world may be hopping off the train. As it becomes possible to simply rent the necessary computing time you need off of a distributed or grid system, the need for more powerful chips becomes even less evident. Of course, I still think there are clear uses for more powerful chips – and having the power itself will create new uses. However, the basic premise is sound. Not everyone needs these more powerful systems, and even if the semiconductor industry can keep innovating to double the power of semiconductors every couple of years, they can’t manufacture twice as many customers who need them any more.