Penn Engineering’s Ben Lee and André DeHon discuss Moore’s Law, the observation that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years with minimal rise in cost, and reflect on the consequences and opportunities of its possible end.
In 1965, Gordon Moore defined a relationship between cadence and cost for computing innovation that came to be known as “Moore’s Law.” This rule both described and inspired the exponential growth that built the Information Age.
According to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years.
(Image: iStock/SweetBunFactory)
As Moore predicted, integrated circuits doubled their processing power every two years. Chips got smaller, faster and cheaper. Transistors shrank, and energy requirements dropped. And in line with Moore’s vision, computers transformed our infrastructure, homes, and thumbs. Markets acclimatized to this regular pace of progress, and the software industry flourished.
We’ve come to expect rapid improvements in technology. But can Moore’s Law go on forever?
Despite its success, doubts about the future of the Intel founder’s forecast are nothing new. Fears about the limits of fundamental physics have long accompanied the mandate to halve transistor sizes, and fresh difficulties regulating energy costs and heat have headlined the last decade of engineering challenges.
Ben Lee, professor in computer and information Science (CIS) and electrical and systems engineering (ESE), and André DeHon, Boileau Professor of Electrical Engineering in CIS and ESE, dig into the stakes of Moore’s Law and reflect on the consequences and opportunities of its possible end.
“Moore’s Law has been an engine of innovation and wealth creation. With our ability to regularly double the number of transistors in a circuit, we’ve been able to get creative with what computers can do,” says DeHon. “And because of Moore’s Law, advancements in technology that begin as high-end applications quickly come down in price and become consumer products. Moore’s Law has made computing ubiquitous, democratized technology and grown our economy.”
“And thanks to Moore’s Law, we live in a world built by inexpensive computing deployed at massive scales,” says Lee. “On one end, we have data center computing and data center–enabled services. On the other end, we have consumer devices and electronics. And between them, we have an incredibly rich software ecosystem enabled by the fact that computing is so abundant. We’ve been able to rely on a steady supply of chips with a lot of memory, processing power and speed—all with the guarantee that these will continue to increase at a regular pace and an exponential rate.”
Lee addresses the end of Moore’s Law, and suggests that the future will have less abundant, and less democratic, dispersement of chips.
“If the underlying hardware becomes less abundant or less capable—if we can’t continue to improve on memory, processing power or speed—that will translate into constraints on what we can build on software. And we’re already running into trouble with scaling,” he says.
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