Moore: Law could last another 15 years

 

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By David Bayon in San Francisco

Posted on 18 Sep 2007 at 21:52

Former Intel CEO and industry icon Gordon Moore believes there's every chance his famous Law could continue uninterrupted for another 15 years.

Making a rare appearance at Intel's Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francicso, Moore admitted he hadn't expected the law - in which the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every 18-24 months - to remain true for as long as it has.

"I think in another decade, a decade and a half or something, we'll hit [a barrier] that is fairly fundamental", Moore claimed in a live interview, before later admitting that he simply couldn't know for sure. "These barriers that look like they're impenetrable seem to disappear as we get closer to them and people have focused on them for a while. That has continually amazed me."

Referring to the earlier demonstration of the industry's first working 32nm wafer, Moore expressed his surprise that wafers had reached 300mm in size. "I did a slide for a presentation in the early 70s... and said in 2000, our wafer size is going to be 57 inches. Just to show how foolish extrapolating exponentials could be."

Moore was on good form throughout the interview, bringing laughter and applause from the audience by half-joking: "you have enough hubris to hope that we can spend the money better than the government," when asked about his charitable Moore Foundation.

He also confessed to being a luddite when asked how he saw human-computer interaction progressing in the future. "I actually use a keyboard and mouse."

Moore appeared at IDF to commemorate the forum's tenth anniversary.