Moore's law facts for kids

Plot of CPU transistor counts against dates of introduction. The vertical scale is semi-logarithmic; the line corresponds to exponential growth with transistor count doubling every two years.

An Osborne portable computer from 1982, and a 2007 Apple iPhone. The Osborne Executive weighs 100 times as much, is nearly 500 times as large by volume, cost about 10 times as much (adjusting for inflation), and has 1/100th the clock frequency of the phone.

Moore's law is that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles about every two years. Intel executive David House said the period was "18 months". He predicted that period for a doubling in chip performance: a combination of the effect of more transistors and their being faster.

The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who described the trend in his 1965 paper. The paper stated that the number of components in integrated circuits had doubled every year from the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 until 1965 and predicted that the trend would continue "for at least ten years". His prediction has proved very accurate. The law is used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development.

The capabilities of many digital electronic devices are strongly linked to Moore's law: processing speed, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras. All of these are improving at (roughly) exponential rates as well.

This exponential improvement has greatly increased the effect of digital electronics in the world economy. Moore's law describes a driving force of technological and social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

This trend has continued for more than half a century. Intel stated in 2015 that the pace of advancement has slowed. Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel, announced that "our cadence today is closer to two and a half years than two".

Images for kids

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  A semi-log plot of transistor counts for microprocessors against dates of introduction, nearly doubling every two years.

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  Gordon Moore in 2004

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  An Osborne Executive portable computer, from 1982, with a Zilog Z80 4 MHz CPU, and a 2007 Apple iPhone with a 412 MHz ARM11 CPU; the Executive has 100 times the weight, almost 500 times the volume, approximately 10 times the inflation adjusted cost, and 1/103rd the clock frequency of the smartphone.

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  The trend of MOSFET scaling for NAND flash memory allows the doubling of floating-gate MOSFET components manufactured in the same wafer area in less than 18 months.

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  A simulation of electron density as gate voltage (Vg) varies in a nanowire MOSFET. The threshold voltage is around 0.45 V. Nanowire MOSFETs lie toward the end of the ITRS road map for scaling devices below 10 nm gate lengths.

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  Scanning probe microscopy image of graphene in its hexagonal lattice structure

See also

In Spanish: Ley de Moore para niños