RIP, Gordon Moore.

"...a lucky guess that got a lot more publicity than it deserved." - Gordon Moore.

Another issue is that Moore’s Law only applies to microchips. Some politicians act as if similar advances apply to solar cells or batteries.

a forecast of a decade, based on a few years data, just to fit sales targets.. is now, more than legendary. Mythological as it were. Amazing. Thanks Jon. Really interesting stuff.

Camera lenses got better because designers could simply let the software run random variations of the lens over and over again to find a better design, the more compute power the more variations you can try and the more likely it is the find a better design. Modern smartphone camera lenses are so ridiculously complex, each element basically has a radial wavy surface that make no sense but somehow focus the light just the right way at the end with minimal aberrations.

21:00 - when mythology is so engrained you create a global industry of adherents. George Moore's passing really struck something in us, even in very adjacent semiconductor research/industries.

Thanks for telling us Moore's Lore, not just the over-quoted "Law".

Hearing the story of Moores Law, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy: We wouldn’t have current level of tech, without the ambitions of Moores Law.

Really interesting video. One small quibble, 2:19 - 2:49 "That 'roughly' is doing some serious heavy lifting". Not really in my opinion. As you point out, 50*2^10 is only 51 200, but the power of the exponent is so large, that you only need to increase the base by 2.5% to 2.05 to make up the difference. 50*2.05^10 = 65 540 Personally I think 2.05 falls comfortably within the neighbourhood of "roughly" 2

We need Moore transistors….

Well, I'll take the opportunity that creators generally see the initial comments to thank you a lot for the amazing content you've been putting out. I wish you only the best! Hugs from (just) another one of your Brazilian viewers ❤

I recall back in the 1990s [US] when it came to PCs, the Moore's Law was getting into the lexicon of engineering professionals that used PCs in their work; as the rapid growing power of succeeding Pentium chips were rendering 18 month old PCs obsolete. It was an amazing era on the increasing processing power of the PCs back then on an annual basis. The engineering company I worked at, as a means to unload the _obsolete_ Pentium PCs they had [less than two-years old], were selling them to employees for around $100 [US]. Yet, those Pentium PCs were purchased at around $2.5K each, when new, two years prior.

rip GM. a real visionary & titan of semiconductors!

Excellent presentation. RIP Dr. Moore.

Good info. However I just want to point out that "DRAM" should be pronounced as "DEE-RAM" Like SRAM is "S - RAM" They should be the same logic when you pronounce the word

Gordon Moore a true pioneer RIP.

Regardless if Moore's law holds true or not, it's always good to have a target. It sets a goal for everyone to innovate and reach that goal.

Always look forward to your videos. Well researched and in depth.

Was a nice surprise to see a picture of mine used as the thumbnail and another used part way through the video! Also thanks for listing the source :D

good video on history and i think this is also one of my favourite quotes from "the intel trinity" "Gordon more than anyone else understood that it wasn’t really a law in the sense that its fulfillment over the years was inevitable, but rather that it was a unique cultural contract made between the semiconductor industry and the rest of the world to double chip performance every couple of years and thus usher in an era of continuous, rapid technological innovation and the life-changing products that innovation produced. That much was understood pretty quickly by everyone in the electronics industry, and it wasn’t long before most tech companies were designing their future products in anticipation of the future chip generations promised by Moore’s Law. But what Gordon Moore understood before and better than anyone was that his law was also an incredibly powerful business strategy. As long as Intel made the law the heart of its business model, as long as it made the predictions of the law its polestar, and as long as it never, ever let itself fall behind the pace of the law, the company would be unstoppable. As Gordon would have put it, Moore’s Law was like the speed of light. It was an upper boundary. If you tried to exceed its pace, as Gene Amdahl did at Trilogy, your wings would fall off. Conversely, if you fell off the law’s pace, you quickly drew a swarm of competitors. But if you could stay in the groove, as Intel did for forty years, you were uncatchable"

Listening to this, almost makes me wonder if Moore's Law was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Something that motivated people to push harder for technological advancement, which ended up making it come true.

The Broken Silicon episode you were on was 🔥!!!

Over the past weekend, I've been thinking of Moore, the traitorous 8, the last AMD video that you had out recently, and the impact these men made on the industry. Thanks for this video (or tribute?)

Thank you for yet another educational video. The timing of it's release is uncanny. RIP Gordon Moore indeed. A parallel technology trend which doesn't get as much attention is magnetic storage (disk drives). This has been on a similar trajectory as integrated circuits have been, and has been every bit as important to the development of technology. Data storage is now so plentiful and cheap that we don't even think about it. KZfaq allows anyone to upload unlimited video content for the world to watch. That is thanks to the magnetic storage revolution. Maybe you could do a video on that topic at some point.

I would never argue that we don't need improvements in compute performance but you can make the related statement that improvements in computing power (along with a seemingly never ending thirst for more SW developers) has lead to less efficient SW being developed to take adequate advantage of compute performance.

I fucking love how this guy does not separate jokes and information. You have to actually pay attention to distinguish.

This is probably my top 10 channels. Keep it going!

How do you pump out so much great content

While certainly in the weather example you have the additional compute power has helped, idk it seems that these massive investments in compute power only improve the prediction by so much, and, given the increasing cost of transistors, you almost have to wonder whether the next step would be worth it.

Do basically Moores law was a self fulfilling prophecy. The industry followed it not because of some universal physical law but because everyone in the industry tried their best to follow it for various reasons.

Moore's law is dead, long live Gordon Moore.

Excellent video, Jon! Among other things it explains why I was never sure what Moore's Law predicted. Was it a doubling every year, every 2 years, every 18 months? Thing itself, Moore's Law, has been redefined to fit the data, the doubling over a span of time.

I disagree that regular people do not really care about it anymore. Software expects for systems to advance, web alone, try using web with devices 10 years old, you will rage like crazy how slow everything is. The productivity goes up as well with more powerful units.

A few years ago I saw a Philosophy Tube video, in which for the first time I heard Moore's Law referred to as a marketing term, as opposed to a venerable guideline for technological progress. This video illustrates that label wasn't just left-wing cynicism, but kind of accurate -- it demonstrably instilled a confidence in progress that drove sales.

Wow, incredible history. I remember my first computer, a VIC 20, then upgrading to the C-64, then the 8086. The first computer I programmed was with Holirith cards on a Univac that used magnetic ring memory and large drum magnetic tape. It was a simple employee hours/wages program. So many things have changed since then. My cell phone has more computing power than the biggest computer that our local college had at that time. Amazing!

Shrinking transistor technology also led to lower power consumption solutions, particularly valuable for battery powered devices

Modern SSD have really revolutionized computing for the base user - boot in sub 2 minutes - after Windows updates can still often be sub 5 minutes.

I appreciate your take on what you said was technological nihilism, that improving the speed (among other things) of electronics is a good and necessary thing. Even if the average consumer doesn't see it, the track record of these developments have indeed transformed the lives of many humans. Seemingly, for the better.

And here I though this was going to be some nonsense about how accurate it's been and how it will never end. Nice that you actually looked up the info first. Nicely done.

Another great video Jon! The last few minutes were especially interesting for me - I'll read that paper. I'd like to know what other industries rely on increasing compute density. I think that mobile phones are an example, the industry plans around people needing to buy new phones to keep up with the latest software. But if phones stop getting more powerful, then that industry needs to rethink its financial plans. I'm also guessing that AI (especially the training side) will want more and more compute going forwards.

I remember in the late 70s in Manila we were making a K&S 478 add on that turned that manual wire bonder into one controlled by a microprocessor. Zylog, AMD, Intel, were our customers... what an amazing time.... our computer had no monitor, used a trackpad with a billard ball in it, and had 12 kb of ram!

Right on. Thanks for sharing.

Never thought I'd hear an overlap between all the dead space lore channels I follow and my semiconductor manufacturing interests

Since "Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years," all that is required to keep it valid forever is to make bigger ICs.

Moore's Law will never truly die. :(

Interesting video, and thanks for the content! I just know today that Dr. Moore passed away on Friday... RIP legend...

There ought to have been discussion of Dennard scaling which was a key driver of rapid processor improvement, node shrinks gave not only smaller & cheaper but also faster transistors at a constant energy cost, meaning there weren't the heat & power wall issues which halted the frequency scaling. I was a bit disappointed that this channel failed to mention that as most people focus on number of transistors, when multi-core is a response to physical limitations on uni-processor performance.

Moore's law, like every exponential in nature, is bounded by physical optimization limitations and more accurately follows a Sigmoidal curve as the technology hits an inflection point and only gives you diminishing returns and the graph goes logarithmic. The only way to advance is to switch to a new technology. Adding cores, gate geometry, 3D stacking has helped in many areas, but we'll likely have to switch from Silicon mosfets to Gallium Nitride or other chemistries to get any sort of frequency improvements at this point.

FYI…NOAA is typically called “no-ah.” Thank you for great documentation that Moore’s Law is passé.

That truck backing up really sells this video.

Brilliant, as always. The world needs more compute. Long live the Moore's law !

Awesome video, Jon. I worked on Intel's 65nm node - you got most of the products of the time (Cedarmill, Yonah, Tukwilla). Great summary on the main drivers keeping Moore's Law alive (advancements in design and lithography). From 2000 - 2010, Intel's biggest worry was being categorized a monopoly and broken up. Since then, Intel lost its once-massive competitive advantage, and has been surpassed by TSMC and Samsung. The company was a juggernaut with Moore, but after his retirement, hubris crept into the company culture, and mismanagement became the norm, IMO.

Thanks!

I have been looking into Graphene FETs for computational use and other alternatives to the existing Si. One of the main challenges facing any Si alternative is the repeated "extending" of Moore's law. Would you cover post Silicon technologies in a video ? I find your videos quite fascinating and they help keep me informed while I look for roles in the semiconductor industry. Thank you.

really interesting...quick question, I'd like to watch the video about Wang Labs referred to at 6:05 but am not finding it?

Did not expect to see dead space in a Asianometry video😂😂👍🏻👍🏻

If you take a technology that's developing that rapidly and is that early in it's lifecycle and give me a ten year roadmap into the future and at year 10 you are actually at what you said would be year 9 that's amazingly accurate, it wasn't perfectly accurate but it's incredibly rare to see anything close to that as far as I see.

Great video. If you are running out of topics, then the Wintel and x86 story could be one.

Amazing analytical history of transistors and chip design.

With chat gpt 4 this week and how much programmers are already saying it’s helping them code, I can’t help but feel we are just at the start of another massive Burt’s of exponential growth. Soon we will be able to code 10x more things, 10x faster for a fraction of the cost. That alone will be a massive boost to efficiency. As AI models grow it’s only going to get better. Add to that how quickly quantum computing is growing these last few years. Sure it’s an entirely different field but we have no idea what quantum computers could be capable of 20 years from now because we haven’t had the tools to start playing with them until yesterday.

I love the little bits of humor, wit and charm you add to each video, "...technically correct, the best kind of correct (from Futurama)", and that "Whomp Whomp". We see you, @Asianometry we see you. 😘

Plot twist: it was a log curve

It’s NOT a law. It’s an OBSERVATION.

As your narration and explanation is unbeatable, would be great if you could video on evolution of technology from 1400 AD (printing press) till date and how humans were worried about jobs being replaced. This would be very relevant to current GPT / AI revolution.

I’m so glad you addressed the elephant in the room right at the beginning.

i was going to sleep but i guess not

Moore really got to see quite the transformation in computing power over his life.

Your videos are too cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Moore's Law should be rewritten as an Old English epic poem, say in the style of "Beowulf".

I am simple man, I see an interesting article cited, and I upvote.

There's another wave coming in semiconductor manufacturing - the maturing of the industry. Optical scaling has a physical limit and wafer size is not going to go beyond 300mm. What we'll see is all chips becoming much cheaper, particularly complex ones as industry laggards catch up. I think the best is yet to come.

It can't go on forever...

Appreciate the deep respect for Moore! Only comment is the node charge didn't really end in 2006 for Intel. They executed pretty well until about 2014-2015.

1978 the Motorola 6800. The applications uses exploded. The rocket was just launched. I loved all that was CMOS the RCA 4 bit; Now we are at around 2000MIPS. The IBM System 360 waas about 16.6MIPS in 1970. The self heat now increases with operating temperature due to higher leakage currents of smaller geometry, around 90nanoM

RIP G. Moore

I was not expecting a Dead Space reference bravo

1 trillion fold increase of compute for 2 degrees of accuracy seems like a gross misuse of energy.

RIP Doctor Moore. Your fingerprints are all over everything, forever.

He died with his law, after 2013, stagnation.

Could you make a video about Nanoimprint lithography?

wonderful

did you get a new mic?

Rest in Peace, Gordon Moore (March 24, 2023)

"In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most. Time taken in stocking energy to build an energy system, adding to it the time taken in building the system will always be longer than the entire useful lifetime of the system. No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores. No system of energy can deliver sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it. This universal truth applies to all systems. Energy, like time, flows from past to future".

There are of course business applications for more computing power. But for the first time in history, consumer products today are not limited by computing power but by things like network speed. The market for more advanced chips is a lot smaller if you're developing for a few HPC clusters at companies or universities rather than smartphones, which perform just fine with a 7nm chip for the vast majority of people

Moore's law today is ~15% yield improvement per year

The actors at 11:05 haven't actually soldered a goddamn thing in their entire lives.

In the midnight hour, he cried Moore Moore Moore. With a rebel yell, he cried Moore Moore Moore

Personally I would look at "Kurzwell's law" so cost of computing as calculation/s per $1000, because it extend to times with punching machines and ignore technical aspects, which is interesting as a story how it change with time. About end, I would give different arguments "you don't need more computing for today software, but only today" because to allow something new, sometimes is few orders of magnitud before it become available (real time RT in games, really smart AI etc). Where are limits to human perception as resolution, refresh or interaction, but quality and complexity have a long way. As autonomous cars, robots (humanoid or not but one which can deliver stuff under your door) and many many more. But AI revolution is only at beginning and Von Neumann architecture will not be best for it.

I couldn't find the video on wang labs, is it still around?

We need to adapt and change the way we compute itself. We need to quit looking for unicorn farts with dark matter detectors and tackle problems like P Vs. NP. We need to make out computing me effective and efficient. Right now we run A LOT of flawed, blotted programs. I think things like gallium arsenic will surely help but we need to go back to the basics. We need to change the geometry and architecture of processors. The advent of the arm processor is a perfect example.

It's hard to think of a single person who effected more human lives than Gordon Moore, RIP Gordon thank you, I hope Pat doesn't run your company into the ground completely.

I realize now how lucky I am to have met this guy, and many other great inventors and scientists. I think being scientist is one of the most beautiful lifes one could have. What's your job?

We need 4k game running at 120hz refresh rate. That is another 6 years away

This was a dope video

I need more compute for my gaming rig still, My 380 can still just barely drive current gen VR titles, I will need sever orders of magnetude more compute before even being able to drive something currently high end like A XR3 at a native resulution. If i also wan't high refreshrates (atleast 144 hertz but preveribly in the 200s) without reprojection and raycasting for improved lighting then we are still many many orders of magnetude away from what is needed.

insanely insightful! Thank you, Asiannometry.

The less popular corollary to moore's law is the one about how moore's law will be re-defined in order to argue that it's not really meaningless every 3-4 years.

His estimate of 65,000 components in 10 years wasn't that far off from a (roughly) factor of two. It's a bit unfair to say the word roughly was "doing a lot of heavy lifting" when the 65k component figure comes from a factor of 2.05 instead of 2.

From a chip users standpoint, I remember the market wide semi level, the transition to new FET designs, in the 1st half of the 1980s. These improved MOSFETs made faster CMOS chips, so big chips, moved from NMOS to lower power CMOS. At the discrete level, the creation of power MOSFETs. I thought Intel's big win was IBM choosing its uP for its IBM PC, and the clones, having to stick to it, to stay compatible. Even moving to the 386, when IBM balked at using it, fearing stepping on its mainframe market.