CSC/ECE 506 Fall 2007/wiki1 1 ab

Moore's Law

In 1965, Gordon Moore famously observed a growth trend in microprocessor technology that has held true ever since. His prediction that microchip feature density would double every 18 months has proven largely correct despite the incredible changes the industry has seen since the 1960s. In some ways, the "law" predicted by Moore has been a self-fulfilling prophecy, pushing the industry to meet its Moore's Law "quota" and drive feature sizes down and clock rates up.

It is predicted that the Moore's Law trend will continue for some time. Chip manufacturers continue to make design improvements that perpetuate the continual increase in chip complexity. [1] While increasing the number of transistors on a chip seems to directly impact the single-processor area of computing, it also has numerous implications in the multiprocessor regime. Of course, increased density yields increased performance in all types of computers, but it also allows for new types of parallel processors such as the now-common single-ship multi-core CPU. Incorporating parallel computing principles onto a single chip has made the benefits of parallelism more affordable even for everyday consumers, and this trend can be expected to continue.