But for a few years now, the rapid pace has been stalling – Moore’s Law is about to come to an end. It is no coincidence that CPU developers bring new, better models to market every two years. But it didn’t just predict the development in the semiconductor industry, it drove it. Moore’s law, which he said would describe the trend of the next 10 years, has retained its validity for half a decade.
In his essay, he predicted miracles: Home computers, automatic controls for cars and “personal portable communication devices”. In 1965 – when computers still filled entire wardrobes – Moore spotted a trend. Written in 1870, Vernes envisioned a world with electricity, submarines, and aeroplanes that was amazingly close to the actual future. Moore’s essay turned 55 in April and reads a bit like Jules Verne’s “ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea“. It means that research is progressing at breakneck speed and that the computing power of computers is growing exponentially (the word “exponential” has probably become familiar to most people since the Corona pandemic at the latest). And lastly, pause for a moment and reflect on the meaning of Moore’s Law. A smaller transistor is not always as good as its big brother. Moreover, doubling the number of transistors does not necessarily mean doubling the computing power. Moore’s law is of course not a law in the strict sense it is an observation. Since powers of ten are plotted on the vertical axis (1,10,100,1000,…), the red line describes an exponential progression. Since the invention of the computer, devices have been shrinking over time and a new generation emerges about every 10 years. So Moore found that every two years on average, researchers manage to split all the transistors on a chip in two, with each of the new transistors being just as strong as the previous one. The size of the chip remains the same in this comparison, of course, because otherwise you could double the size of the chip and be done – that’s not what is meant. Conversely, this means that the size of a transistor halves. Moore says the number of transistors per chip doubles every two years. You could say that what neurons are to the brain what transistors are to the processor.
The transistorĪ transistor is the heart of a processor it is the part that computes. Impressive, isn’t it? Okay, let me explain. The number of transistors that fit in a microprocessor of a given size doubles roughly every two years. The microchip had been developed 7 years earlier and Moore studied the trend of research. In 1965, he made an observation that would shape the development of technology to this day. Gordon Moore is an American scientist and co-founder of Intel. In fact, this is not just a vague feeling but it can be made concrete with the help of Moore’s Law. Moore’s Lawīesides pure curiosity on the part of physicists, this development also has very practical reasons: our technology is reaching its limits.
We no longer see nature as a Lego box but rather knead the world as we like it. Instead of just using quantum physics to explain technology, we want to fully exploit its potential. Instead of just understanding the structure of atoms, we want to build our own atoms. Instead of just calculating the shape of electron orbitals, we want to shape orbitals that do not exist in nature.
Today we are at a turning point – in the second quantum revolution.