[ExI] Moore's Law

[Adrian Tymes]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 10:33:07AM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>> > There is no fundamental progress in software. The progress in hardware has
>> > recently been limited, especially since Moore has ended.
>>
>> The data I've seen suggests that Moore's Law continues through the
>
> http://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/1388-scariest-graph-i-ve-seen-recently.html

I have seen such graphs before.  It often turns out that they get their data
by comparing current prices - e.g., the current price of older tech, that has
had years put into refining it and getting the cost down, vs. the current
price of newer tech, that is much fresher from the lab.  I don't see anything
in the article that suggests this is not the case.

This is a classic argument against any new solar tech, with the implicit
assumption that there won't be successful R&D to lower the costs - or
that costs can come down with larger manufacturing blocks - and
therefore that solar can never become cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

>> present day - at least for actually released hardware.  There is no
>
> Yeah, I like to call things before most people notice.

So have a lot of others who said Moore's Law was dead, over the
past few decades.

> Nope. You need about nm^3 for an addressable bit.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spintronics suggests one can make an
addressable bit in less size than that.  Or effectively so:
multiple bits per atom.

>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law has data that shows it
>> continued at least through 2011.  So if Moore's Law has ended, one
>
> We've got March of 2013. 2011 is ancient history.

Not so much.  The late-'90s dip lasted longer than 2 years.

> I say rather firmly that you haven't been been looking at the data.

And I say you are looking at a smaller subset of the data than is
relevant, and seeing a pattern that more data casts doubt upon.