--- Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 4/19/08, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Actually Moore's law holds pretty well back to about 1900 if you consider > > the > > computing power of mechanical adding machines. (I believe Kurzweil > > studied > > this). Moore's law is about the cost of computing, not the size of > > transistors. > > > But, until they figure out something besides transistors to make computers > from, Moore's law has worked in recent decades via transistor shrinkage, > thereby making them cheaper. My point is that they can't shrink any more, so > they aren't going to get any cheaper, except via slow improvements in > methods of manufacturing the same (and not smaller/faster) parts.
Moore's law is not about transistors. It is about computing technology. It applied to relays, vacuum tubes, core memory, and punch cards. It applies to disk drives, fiber optics, and wireless networks. It will apply to quantum computers, 3-D optical memories, molecular components, nanobots, and technologies that haven't been discovered yet. Nobody in 1900 could possibly have imagined a modern computer. Even if we couldn't make transistors smaller or use an alternative technology, we could still improve reliability to make wafer scale integration practical, add more layers, stack wafers, etc. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
