Moore's Law in Semiconductor Electronics Industry - Essay Example

Moores Law Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel made a prophetic prediction in 1965. Moore, a physical chemist who also co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor, first articulated what would later be identified as his law in a 1965 paper for Electronics magazine’s 35th anniversary. In his original 1965 paper, Moore asserted that the number of components that could be placed on a chip could be expected to double every year. Just 10 years down the line, i.e. in 1975, Moore revised his prediction, stating that “the new slope might approximate a doubling every two years, rather than every year.” to 24 months1. The law started as just as an article in a journal has not only become a guiding principle in the semiconductor electronics industry but it has also helped in analyzing the technology trajectories in general. In fact Moore’s law means better technologies and more Performance in the field of electronics and IT. Rapid pace of advancements in electronics and IT industry from big vacuum valves to ICs, and from ENIAC to laptops and palmtops made it sure that the processing power, measured in Millions of Instructions per Second (MIPS)2, kept steadily rising because of increased transistor counts. Had there been only the advancements in technologies without a matching invitation for the customers to use the technology, Moore’s law would not been such a big success. This law also ensured that costs too went down. This helped in integrating the powerful technique more seamlessly into our daily lives. Moore’s law is in fact not a ‘law’ in actual terms, as its proponent himself kept revising it from time to time. But it was indeed a well thought out business foresightedness on the part of an able entrepreneur. The law itself may have undergone changes couple of times, but one constant throughout the varying formulation of Moore’s law is that all formulations observe that the number of transistors per chip, also known as complexity, has been growing rapidly3. This provides an indication of the applicability of Moore’s law. Even after providing for the tolerance for manufacturing variances, inefficiencies in wires, noise margins, etc. the semiconductor technology has indeed delivered on the expected lines. Intel has been one of the pioneers in proving the applicability of this law. Company’s commitment to Moores Law has in fact delivered exponential increases in the number of transistors integrated into our processors and other leading platform ingredients’4. It is depicted in the graph below. The rapid advancements in semiconductor technology have been possible because of four main factors: die size, line dimension, technical cleverness, and technical innovation. Together, they serve to explain most of the exponential improvements in transistors per chip described by Moore’s law (Mollick, 2006). Moore’s law has resulted in an unbelievable turnaround for the electronics, communication and computer industry. The first ever computer ENIAC, built in early 1940s, filled an entire room, weighed thirty tons, and consumed two hundred kilowatts of power. It generated so much heat that it had to be placed in one of the few rooms at the University with a forced air cooling system. Vacuum tubes, over 19,000 of them, were the principal elements in the computers circuitry. It also had fifteen hundred relays and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors. All of this electronics were held in forty-two panels nine feet tall, two feet wide, and one foot thick. They were arranged in a "U" shape, with three panels on wheels so they could be moved around. An IBM card reader and card punch were used respectively for input and output5. Today we are talking about intelligent chips which can be fitted in the ring of our middle finger. That’s the kind of advancement which no other industry has experienced. Integrating millions of circuit elements in one small chip meant reduction in the size of the computer and an exponential increase in the speed of the computation. Huge size machines gave way to PCs, which in turn is being gradually replaced with laptops and palmtops. The advancements are visible in all walks of life. Be it in education, health care, military, media etc. the perceptible change in IT has added value in the lives of people in general. Internet, a multi-cornered network of computers from all across the globe is the biggest example of the extent to which the computational techniques and networking have undergone the changes. The pace, at which media landscape is being transformed, is also the result of convergence or fusion of telecommunication, computing, microelectronics and broadcasting. It is the increasing application of IT, as a determining factor, in social and economic issues that are heralding the nations rapidly towards Information Societies. The boom in satellite and cable TV, proliferation of TV channels, introduction of cellular/paging services and internet communication are all pointers towards the gains Moore’s law has brought about in the lives of people. As computer graphics and virtual studios become the norm, the world is listening news from Virtual Newscasters, while holding collaborative conferences between remote participants. The way we communicate with each other has also undergone a sea change, from the postal mail to e-mail and instant messaging are possible only due to the changes brought about by Moore’s law. Even for signing the documents today we talk about e-signing or digital signatures. Similarly diagnosing a disease and providing medical facilities to the patient has become lot simpler and patient friendly. Today doctors from remote locations can provide medical relief to their patients without even having any actual contact with them. Banking industry has been one big benefactor of such advancements. Automatic Teller Machines, e-banking, m-banking, credit cards, debit cards etc. would certainly not have been possible so soon, without a little help from Gordon Moore. Businesses across the board emphasize on making use of Information Systems Management for collecting, analyzing and arriving at any decision with more help from ‘expert systems’. Not everybody had agreed to Moore’s law and there have been dissenting voices from time to time. For example6 Stan Williams and Phil Kuekes of HP Labs, say the ability to shrink transistors will start to become problematic by around 2010. That should prompt manufacturers to adopt alternatives, such as HPs crossbar switches, to control electrical signals. While Intel itself projects a more gradual picture, Intels director of technology strategy, Paolo Gargini, says, “Around 2015, manufacturers will start to move toward hybrid chips, which combine elements of traditional transistors with newfangled technology such as nano-wires”. There is also a school of thought which says Moore’s law is due for retirement. Arik Hesseldahl (2006) says7, “Many have predicted this before only to regret it later. But Im willing to bet that by the time Moores Law turns 50, it will be nothing but a memory. Its due for retirement.” Read More