Murphy's Law

Moore’s Law states that computing power doubles about once every eighteen months. This increase in power may not be directly noticeable by consumers, but Intel has continued to provide new technology for many years that improves upon previous abilities. However, City College of New York theoretical physics professor Michio Kaku believes Moore’s Law may be coming to an end. Kaku, who has predicted the collapse of Moore’s Law since at least 2003, says the critical point will be reached within a decade. Constant shrinking of transistors in unsustainable.

Intel has a new chip called Ivy Bridge, ten nanometers smaller from the previous generation, but reports indicate that the chip runs hotter than its predecessors under overclocking, which could suggest that transistor density and size are becoming a concern for microprocessors.

Three-dimensional chips and parallel processing may potentially delay the collapse of Moore’s Law, but Kaku claims these workarounds will reach their limits in time. He proposes that new forms of computing, such as molecular transistors, may provide relief, but mass production is currently impossible. Quantum computing could also eventually become more powerful, but it is not very well understood.

My opinion on the matter goes about like this: if the transistor has more power than the previous generation, it doesn’t really need to be smaller. As long as it has more computing power, it could be the same size or even slightly larger than the previous version. This would prevent overheating by spreading out mass over a larger volume, thus lowering the density. Not everything needs to be microscopically tiny. Personally, I’ve never understood the popular fascination with paper-thin laptops and ultra-thin plasma televisions.

Everything in technology seems determined to find the smallest possible medium for their product. The only technology increasing in size seems to be cell phones. Some new cell phones are almost large enough to pass for tablet computers.

In an age where nothing stays the same for long, let’s try to keep something stable while we can.