moore's law

Tilera's 72-core chip doubles down on multicore approach

Tilera, one of the most aggressive advocates of the multicore-processor approach, today announced a new member of its Tile-Gx family that doubles the number of computing engines to 72.

The Tile-Gx72, the company's new flagship chip, isn't geared for general-purpose computing tasks like running smartphones or PCs. Instead, it's for tasks that can be sliced up into many independent operations -- networking equipment handling multiple data streams or servers for handling lots of streams of media.

But even if you're not going to find Tilera Inside stickers on your next tablet, it's an interesting product, … Read more

IBM brings carbon nanotube-based computers a step closer

In the effort to find a replacement for today's silicon chips, IBM researchers have pushed carbon nanotube technology a significant step ahead.

Carbon nanotubes are very small structures made of a lattice of carbon atoms rolled into a cylindrical shape, and a team of eight researchers have figured out a way to precisely place them on a computer chip, IBM announced today. That development allows them to arrange the nanotubes 100 times more densely than earlier methods, a key step in economical chipmaking, and IBM has built a chip with more than 10,000 carbon nanotube-based elements.

The new … Read more

What would happen if Moore's Law did fizzle?

First of all, don't panic.

If Moore's Law came to an end and computers stopped getting steadily faster, plenty of companies would suffer. But an end likely would come with lots of warning, lots of measures to cushion the blow, and lots of continued development even if transistors stopped shrinking.

The hardest hit would be companies dependent on consumers replacing their electronics every few years and tech companies such as Google whose long-term plans hinge on faster computers, cheaper storage, and better bandwidth. And the continuing miniaturization of computers -- mainframes to minicomputers to PCs to smartphones -- … Read more

On the Moore's Law hot seat: Intel's Mike Mayberry (Q&A)

Mike Mayberry, perhaps more than anyone, is the guy who keeps Moore's Law ticking.

As the vice president who leads Intel's research team, he bears responsibility for making sure his employer can cram ever more electronic circuitry onto computer chips. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore 47 years ago observed the pace at which microchips' transistor count doubled, and Mayberry is in charge of keeping that legacy intact.

A lot rests on Moore's Law, which in a 1975 update to Moore's original 1965 paper predicted that the number of transistors will double every two years. That means a … Read more

Moore's Law: The rule that really matters in tech

Year in, year out, Intel executive Mike Mayberry hears the same doomsday prediction: Moore's Law is going to run out of steam. Sometimes he even hears it from his own co-workers.

But Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who 47 years ago predicted a steady, two-year cadence of chip improvements, keeps defying the pessimists because a brigade of materials scientists like Mayberry continue to find ways of stretching today's silicon transistor technology even as they dig into alternatives. (Such as, for instance, super-thin sheets of carbon graphene.)

Oh, and don't forget the money that'… Read more

Theoretical physicist: Moore's Law has just 10 years to go

Here's another warning that the end is within view for Moore's Law, one of the backbone theories of the computing industry.

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku predicts that in "10 years or so we will see the collapse of Moore's Law. In fact, already, we are seeing a slowing down of Moore's Law. Computing power simply cannot maintain its rapid exponential rise using standard silicon technology."

Intel: Moore's Law resource guide

In a presentation Kaku made earlier in the month, Kaku noted that a Pentium chip today "has the layer almost down to … Read more

One-atom-tall wires could extend Moore's Law

There may be a bit more room at the bottom, after all.

In 1959 physicist Richard Feynman issued a famed address at a meeting of the American Physical Society, a talk entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." It was an invitation to push the boundaries of the miniature, a nanotech call to arms that many physicists heeded to great effect. But more than 50 years since his challenge, researchers have begun to run up against hurdles that could slow the progression toward ever-tinier devices. Someday soon those hurdles could threaten Moore's Law, which describes … Read more

From 'bots to EVs--5 predictions for '12 in cutting-edge tech

Thanks in no small part to Moore's Law, engineers and entrepreneurs now have incredibly powerful tools at their hands, creating a fertile environment for invention.

In the year ahead, we're guaranteed more powerful supercomputers and smartphones from the tech industry's basic building block--the microchip. But in a world where the amount of information doubles every year, computers' ability to make sense of it has never been more vital, touching every field of scientific research from robotics to satellite imagery.

Meanwhile, advances in very different fields--materials science and biotech--are paving the way for better batteries, biofuels, and cleaner … Read more

A Moore's Law for computers and energy efficiency

Today's smartphones need to be charged far more frequently than older cell phones. But if it weren't for rapid improvements in energy efficiency, smartphones, laptops, and other mobile gadgets might still be on the drawing boards.

A paper published in the last edition of the IEEE's Annals of the History of Computing finds that there is a rough equivalent to Moore's Law when it comes to energy and computers. As computing muscle has increased over time, the amount of energy needed per computation has gone down, the paper finds. In fact, improvements in energy efficiency are … Read more