The Moore Dilemma

Why is it that after a year, or even a few months, some new hardware is released that makes my computer obsolete? Yeah, you could say that computers are always getting faster, but isn’t there a more precise explanation?

I think the most elegant way of doing this is to refer to Moore’s Law, named after the co-founder of Intel who proposed it. Essentially, it states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit is double every two years. According to Intel, that, in conjunction with the faster performance of transistors, means every 18 months sees a doubling in chip performance. That’s pretty cool.

The obvious question here is, how long can we keep this up? Eventually, won’t we run out of space for transistors? To answer that question, we have to look at what transistors are.

To put it crudely, a transistor is a switch with no moving parts. It can be closed by generating a potential. Each time it opens and closes, it is essentially sending some information, a 0 or a 1. Clearly, the more transistors you have the more information you can deal with (for an in-depth explanation, check out this Veritasium video. It’s fantastic.).

Right now, the size of a transistor can be measured in nanometers. 50 Silicon atoms (the things that enable the transistor to work) fit in this space. To minimize the size of a transistor, one has to bring the nodes (watch the video) as close together as possible while being able to break the switch.

Eventually, quantum mechanics will prevail (again, watch the video), and it will be extremely difficult to make transistors any smaller. Current predictions put this date at 2025. 

I first read about this dilemma a few years ago. My first question was, isn’t there a replacement for transistors? Ironically, the answer lies in quantum mechanics! We’ll look at that more in the next entry.