Moore's Law

Back in 1965, just several years after the first integrated circuit was discovered (the basis of modern computing, as before, individual transistors brought us pocket calculators, and before that vacuum tubes drove computing), a scientist named Gordon Moore wrote a paper in Electronics magazine after observing the explosive growth of processing power in those early circuits, and predicted that the number of transistors per integrated circuit would double every 18 months, thus "Moore's Law" (Gordon Moore went on to found Intel Corporation).

The media coined the term; the "Law" is not a law in the scientific sense, as it has not proven to be absolutely correct, but the general trend closely coincides with the predicition, as depicted in the chart below. Within the next 20 years or so, physical limits of a circuit will gradually cause the "Law" to slow.

In modern culture, the term "Moore's Law" has been changed from the original meaning to now signifying that the actual processing power will change.While that is not absolutely correct, it does somewhat mirror Gordon Moore's original thesis.

Processor

Year of Introduction Transistors
4004 1971 2,250
8008 1972 2,500
8080 1974 5,000
8086 1978 29,000
286 1982 120,000
386™ 1985 275,000
486™ DX 1989 1,180,000
Pentium� 1993 3,100,000
Pentium II 1997 7,500,000
Pentium III 1999 24,000,000
Pentium 4 2000 42,000,000


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