Author Topic: Considerations about "Moore's Law"  (Read 11416 times)

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Offline shadow_2609Topic starter

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Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« on: July 23, 2016, 09:59:34 pm »
Hi everyone!
I wanted to open this topic because... you know, Moore's Law! I don't get it!
Other reasons because I wanted to open this topic is because I would like to know the prospective of everyone (or almost):
Let's start by saying... Why it has to be a law? Mr. Moore (hats off), just made a prediction, NOT  a rule to follow or otherwise you will sent to the last level of the hell where you walks bare feet on upside down chips; here it is my "consideration":
First of all, why it is not a law? I answer this thing mentioning real LAWS like Ohm's Law, Lentz's Law, Kirchhoff's Law... this are LAWS, it defines something, it describes a phenomenon, it gives you a set of rules to determine other tangible things... Moore's LAW it is just a set of 2 predictions (or proven theories, by now) made from just an analysis, and maybe to enhance competitivity for whatever reasons.
Second of all, everyone is throwing this USELESS terror of "OOOH NOOO! Moore's Law is reaching an end, what now?" ... this prove again that this is just a theory, if we will not reach x nanometer in x time the world will not collapse, so there is 3 options:
1)this so-called-law it was formulated in an erroneous way (if it is a REAL LAW)
2)we are so great that we are bending a law
3)this is not a law at all
Now, I said what i think and I hope I didn't create a flame post, I say that this is jus my simple, and maybe ignorant, opinion, and with the help of this community, we may all learn something.
Let's start now!  :-+ :-+
What are your opinions? Should we consider more things? Let me know!
Have a nice day
shadow_2609
 

Offline Kilrah

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #1 on: July 23, 2016, 10:10:47 pm »
It just happens to have been correct for so long that it was called a "law" as a recognition to the accuracy of the prediction...
 
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Offline shadow_2609Topic starter

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #2 on: July 23, 2016, 10:20:12 pm »
It just happens to have been correct for so long that it was called a "law" as a recognition to the accuracy of the prediction...

But so, why we keep calling it a Law and keep freaking out when we are reaching the boundary of this prediction? I don't get it  :o btw thanks for the reply ^-^ ^-^ ^-^
 

Online ataradov

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #3 on: July 23, 2016, 10:37:14 pm »
Who is freaking out? Who cares, really?
Alex
 
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Offline Kilrah

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #4 on: July 23, 2016, 10:43:48 pm »
Who cares about what it's called?

It's not a name that will change the fact that something that was true for 40 years and isn't anymore is interesting and with no doubt revealing of a change in the industry.
 
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Offline apis

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #5 on: July 23, 2016, 10:47:19 pm »
I'm guessing it's just modern media that are generating their usual click bait kind of news on a minimal budget.
 
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Online ataradov

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #6 on: July 23, 2016, 10:56:22 pm »
Who cares about what it's called?
About the whole thing in general. It is a nifty observation, noting more.

revealing of a change in the industry.
I don't see it. The fact that we are approaching physical limits will lead to change, but the limits were known 40 year ago as well.

And that's actually good that we've reached this limit, now we can stop worrying about improving the process and start working on architectural improvements.
Alex
 

Offline shadow_2609Topic starter

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #7 on: July 23, 2016, 10:57:47 pm »
Who is freaking out? Who cares, really?
Because I keep reading about the end of Moore's Law like if it is the end of the world and, if I am not wrong, I think I read something on EETimes about this, but like months ago so don't take my words as 100% sure.
Thanks for the reply :-+ :-+
 

Offline shadow_2609Topic starter

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #8 on: July 23, 2016, 10:59:27 pm »
Who cares about what it's called?

It's not a name that will change the fact that something that was true for 40 years and isn't anymore is interesting and with no doubt revealing of a change in the industry.
Great point! I think is more of a change more than an end of something.
Thanks for the reply  :-+ :-+
 

Online ataradov

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #9 on: July 23, 2016, 11:01:14 pm »
EETimes
Well, yes, useless clickbait media. Be glad they don't write about Yellowstone exploding yet. News are of similar quality and value.
Alex
 
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Offline shadow_2609Topic starter

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #10 on: July 23, 2016, 11:03:45 pm »
I'm guessing it's just modern media that are generating their usual click bait kind of news on a minimal budget.

Yes it could be as simple as that, in fact I don't find much point of view from blogs or things not managed by a "company"
Thanks for the reply :-+ :-+ :-+
 

Offline shadow_2609Topic starter

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #11 on: July 23, 2016, 11:08:22 pm »
EETimes
Well, yes, useless clickbait media. Be glad they don't write about Yellowstone exploding yet. News are of similar quality and value.
...and I erroneous thought it was a place to find other information beyond company buyouts and Friday mini quiz ahahahaha  :-DD :-DD
Joking obviously, they also make interesting article about microcontroller (which I absolutely love) and some analog stuffs.
Thanks for replying :-+ :-+ :-+
 

Offline Kilrah

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #12 on: July 23, 2016, 11:12:57 pm »
Because I keep reading about the end of Moore's Law like if it is the end of the world

Well humans don't like any kind of change, that's well known.

I don't see it. The fact that we are approaching physical limits will lead to change, but the limits were known 40 year ago as well.

It's not the engineering field that "freaks out", they obviously know how things are and wouldn't be surprised the least.
It's the sales/marketing depts who have been able to live the easy life for decades and had nothing more to do than shove the "better and faster" stuff that regularly and "naturally" came out of the labs every 2 years out of the door with the ever repeating same speech... These are the ones who will now have to go out of their comfort zone and actually start working to figure out what to do next.
 
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Offline MK14

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #13 on: July 23, 2016, 11:53:02 pm »
Moore's Law may be carrying on just fine. The new advances in 3D stacked, integrated circuits, such as flash memory, are examples of this. Maybe cpus will go the same way, and we will have cpus with a huge number of cores. Cooling them will be one of the on-going challenges, but having a huge number of cores, running at lower frequencies to keep the power dissipation down, is also viable. E.g. Intel's Knights Landing.

But software is still struggling to keep up with usefully being able to use a huge number of cores. But it is quite easy, with some types of software, much harder with others.
There may also be ways of making things considerably smaller than they are now, but which have not been invented yet.

tl;dr
There was the age of mechanical computers, relay computers, valves/tubes, discrete transistors, then Silicon Chips. Hopefully there will be another such technology, sometime in the future.

EDIT:
Where Moore's Law seems to have considerably slowed down is in terms of the main single execution (thread) core speed of a modern day cpu, at about 4 GHz (currently, http://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz, before overclocking), with slightly higher turbo clocks. We seem to have reached a point of very diminishing returns, and great expense, to go below about 10 nm. We are at 14 nm feature size. Next is 10 nm. Even reaching 10 nm (Intel), is taking a rather long time.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2016, 12:19:13 am by MK14 »
 
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Offline all_repair

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #14 on: July 24, 2016, 12:39:55 am »
Self fulfilling prophecy that makes their own living so tough while other people are working on anti-Moore law.  Choose your side carefully.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2016, 01:04:36 am by all_repair »
 
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Online Brumby

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #15 on: July 24, 2016, 01:05:46 am »
I agree with what's been said above... It was a neat observation that just held true for so long, it was given the honorary title of 'Law'.

Any thinking person with an appreciation of the physical challenges will have expected a point where this "Law" will falter at some time.  They may not agree when this would happen, but they would certainly not expect it to continue for a thousand years, let alone indefinitely - something which would be mandatory for a formal Law.

Another problem with thinking about Moore's Law as something invariant (as a true Law should be) is that the maintenance of the fundamental of the 'Law' is driven by human endeavour.  As such, there is no inherent mechanism where the Universe presents conditions that drive or even support such a 'Law'.  If researchers were to 'down tools' for whatever reason, then the formal Law attribute utterly collapses.

As for the Media - yes, some of their material will be clickbait ... possibly a lot of it ... but what such stories also do is draw public attention to the subject, reinforcing the desire for Moore's Law to continue and adding incentive, if not pressure, on the research labs to dig deeper.

What I believe will happen is that researchers will develop alternate technologies to the point of commercial production that will reinvigorate processor development and give Moore's Law a new lease on life.  It might come from photonics, quantum computing, a radical development in silicon or something we haven't even imagined yet. 

It should also be noted that the definition of Moore's Law had changed at one point to reflect a more appropriate measurement - and that this might be something that could be subject to change again, should the technology involved at the time be unable to provide a compatible metric.


Nevertheless, consider 'Moore's Law' as having an honorary title - and you'll be fine.

If the Media want to jump around with the subject, then let them.  There's bound to be an EE or researcher that will enjoy the noise when they put in for funding.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2016, 01:09:28 am by Brumby »
 
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Offline Assafl

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #16 on: July 24, 2016, 07:48:05 am »
Moore's law came from Intel so traditionally it is about microprocessor density speed and price.

But it is a technology observation. So to me it reflects the entire state of the semiconductor industry. So while high stability and high accuracy voltage references do not go down in price (perhaps even the opposite) - embedded systems with on board AD DA BT Wifi USB etc keep getting more and more integrated and more and more capable.

Today's programmers "waste" resources using high level interpretive languages that are quicker in time to market but make use of the extra computational power of devices. This it true not just to embedded but also to desktops, laptops and mobile as well.
 
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Offline shadow_2609Topic starter

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #17 on: July 24, 2016, 10:33:46 am »
Moore's Law may be carrying on just fine. The new advances in 3D stacked, integrated circuits, such as flash memory, are examples of this. Maybe cpus will go the same way, and we will have cpus with a huge number of cores. Cooling them will be one of the on-going challenges, but having a huge number of cores, running at lower frequencies to keep the power dissipation down, is also viable. E.g. Intel's Knights Landing.

But software is still struggling to keep up with usefully being able to use a huge number of cores. But it is quite easy, with some types of software, much harder with others.
There may also be ways of making things considerably smaller than they are now, but which have not been invented yet.

tl;dr
There was the age of mechanical computers, relay computers, valves/tubes, discrete transistors, then Silicon Chips. Hopefully there will be another such technology, sometime in the future.

EDIT:
Where Moore's Law seems to have considerably slowed down is in terms of the main single execution (thread) core speed of a modern day cpu, at about 4 GHz (currently, http://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz, before overclocking), with slightly higher turbo clocks. We seem to have reached a point of very diminishing returns, and great expense, to go below about 10 nm. We are at 14 nm feature size. Next is 10 nm. Even reaching 10 nm (Intel), is taking a rather long time.

So it is possible to this "LAW" to keep being true right? I think the possibility is like what you said, 3d chips structure, and for the temperature I heard graphite is better then silicon, as I remember clearly, I read that oppose less to the flow of electrons, so it produce less heat and can allow for faster speed (and maybe even smaller integration).
Might me quantistic cpu the next step? I read that are not faster then normal cpu but it can process more data, in fact, the 1 bit base can represent more than 1 or 0.
Thanks for the reply  :-+ :-+ :-+
 

Offline shadow_2609Topic starter

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #18 on: July 24, 2016, 11:06:35 am »
Moore's law came from Intel so traditionally it is about microprocessor density speed and price.

But it is a technology observation. So to me it reflects the entire state of the semiconductor industry. So while high stability and high accuracy voltage references do not go down in price (perhaps even the opposite) - embedded systems with on board AD DA BT Wifi USB etc keep getting more and more integrated and more and more capable.

Today's programmers "waste" resources using high level interpretive languages that are quicker in time to market but make use of the extra computational power of devices. This it true not just to embedded but also to desktops, laptops and mobile as well.

So you think it is more vast then just microprocessors? That is a great point! I neve thought about that.
I can agree with you on the wasting of power computation using high level language, if you are talking about pic (with his wasteful c++ compiler), atmel (here just 1 word... ARDUINO! really a WASTE of "1 instruction 1 cycle" propriety), ARM... the only exception is when you are programming something like a computer program or a smartphone app, it is a great thing if you can make a routine in plain assembly, but it is a lot more difficult to make a GUI or a graphical function (or method).
Thanks for the reply :-+ :-+ :-+ :-+
 

Offline tatus1969

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #19 on: July 24, 2016, 11:30:47 am »
I think it can at least be extended to things like RAM, hard drives, flash memories, computer mainboards, smart phones. Wait for two years, and you get at least double performance in these areas for the same price.

Maybe it is just subjective impression, but to me it looks like the curves are getting flatter recently. Just last week I bought two new hard drives, that 2x6TB cost me 350€. The 2x3TB two years ago were at 150€ if I remember correctly.
We Are The Watt - Resistance Is Futile!
 
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Offline shadow_2609Topic starter

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #20 on: July 24, 2016, 12:28:42 pm »
I agree with what's been said above... It was a neat observation that just held true for so long, it was given the honorary title of 'Law'.

Any thinking person with an appreciation of the physical challenges will have expected a point where this "Law" will falter at some time.  They may not agree when this would happen, but they would certainly not expect it to continue for a thousand years, let alone indefinitely - something which would be mandatory for a formal Law.

Another problem with thinking about Moore's Law as something invariant (as a true Law should be) is that the maintenance of the fundamental of the 'Law' is driven by human endeavour.  As such, there is no inherent mechanism where the Universe presents conditions that drive or even support such a 'Law'.  If researchers were to 'down tools' for whatever reason, then the formal Law attribute utterly collapses.

As for the Media - yes, some of their material will be clickbait ... possibly a lot of it ... but what such stories also do is draw public attention to the subject, reinforcing the desire for Moore's Law to continue and adding incentive, if not pressure, on the research labs to dig deeper.

What I believe will happen is that researchers will develop alternate technologies to the point of commercial production that will reinvigorate processor development and give Moore's Law a new lease on life.  It might come from photonics, quantum computing, a radical development in silicon or something we haven't even imagined yet. 

It should also be noted that the definition of Moore's Law had changed at one point to reflect a more appropriate measurement - and that this might be something that could be subject to change again, should the technology involved at the time be unable to provide a compatible metric.


Nevertheless, consider 'Moore's Law' as having an honorary title - and you'll be fine.

If the Media want to jump around with the subject, then let them.  There's bound to be an EE or researcher that will enjoy the noise when they put in for funding.
I didn't know it changed, but it is exactly what I thought, it is not something mandatory, and, by the way, media makes our life difficult sometimes because they are biased of visualization/share things sooo... And I think I will consider it as an honoring title like you said to have less problem with the question haha
Thanks again!! :-+ :-+ :-+
 

Offline shadow_2609Topic starter

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #21 on: July 24, 2016, 12:36:52 pm »
I think it can at least be extended to things like RAM, hard drives, flash memories, computer mainboards, smart phones. Wait for two years, and you get at least double performance in these areas for the same price.

Maybe it is just subjective impression, but to me it looks like the curves are getting flatter recently. Just last week I bought two new hard drives, that 2x6TB cost me 350€. The 2x3TB two years ago were at 150€ if I remember correctly.
This is interesting, I am not aware of cost of computer parts, mainly because i don't have any money to spend and secondly because luckly nothing is gone wrong (just wait and see, 7 days from now my pc will have something), but I noticed it in external hdd, they don't go down so easily expecialy SSD.
Thanks for the new point of view  :-+ :-+ :-+
 

Offline Richard Crowley

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #22 on: July 24, 2016, 01:11:42 pm »
Moore's law came from Intel ...
Moore's editorial was published on April 19, 1965 when Moore worked at Fairchild.
Intel did not exist at the time. It was founded on July 18, 1968
 
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Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #23 on: July 24, 2016, 03:03:41 pm »
Moores law was an observation that turned into a plan.  The entire semi industry guides it's R&D, marketing and whatever by what is required to make this true.  It is a convenient form of collaberation.  Calling it a law is convenient, but has the psychological benefit of making it easier to justify sales plans, R&D budgets and the like.  Unfortunately it is a plan that is harder and more expensive to follow each year.  The death of Moores law has been projected since the late 1980s.  There is no real telling when it when we will finally depart from Moores law, but it does seem likely in the next decade or so.

There is nothing wrong with calling it a law.  Ohms law is an observation that has been found to be true in many circumstances.  It is not universally true.  Try operating your SMD resistor at 1 million volts and comparing the results to an ohms law prediction.
 
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Offline Kilrah

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Re: Considerations about "Moore's Law"
« Reply #24 on: July 24, 2016, 03:22:43 pm »
I think it can at least be extended to things like RAM, hard drives, flash memories, computer mainboards, smart phones. Wait for two years, and you get at least double performance in these areas for the same price.

Maybe it is just subjective impression, but to me it looks like the curves are getting flatter recently.

It has flattened like crazy, mor than that it's pretty much hit a brick wall around 2010, and pretty much instantly switched from a 2-3 year cycle to I'd say a 6+ year one.

That sudden halt is what drives people to wonder what to do to and talk about Moore's law... even if it doesn't apply to that. Chips may actually still become more complicated but the problem is that we aren't really getting much extra performance out of them..
 
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