Geek Speak — HabitableZone

Geek Speak

Moore's Law has finally failed ?
SDF — (archived)

Moore's Law -- (môrz lâ) (n.) The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades.

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I've noticed that computer ads in the newspaper have had CPU speeds at 3.0 GHz or less for at least a couple years. Computers aren't getting any faster. Instead hard drives keep getting bigger. Like I need a 200 GByte hard drive! Apparently this is the new definition of Moore's Law. A sneaky let-down if you ask me.

Explanation: my desktop PC is over five years old and does everything but play the newest games. For that I bought an Xbox. It cost less than an upgrade on my PC's video card. The next generation Playstation is expected to cost over $1000 and contain two high-end graphics accelerator cards. Not sure if I'll buy a new PC or a new game console when one fails.

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