Beating Moore's Law

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In 1965 Gordon Moore, a co founder of the microchip manufacturing company Intel, predicted that the number of transistors per microchip, and hence the processing power of the chip, would double every two years.  This prediction became known "Moore's Law." Today advances in microchip manufacture are still keeping pace with Moore's law.

Up to now people making computers, digital cameras and phones have been able to jam them with more powerful chips by increasing the number of transistors on each chip.  However even Intel has issued a warning that in ten to fifteen years Moore's law may be obsolete because computer processors will have reached their limit.  This, of course, would have enormous economic consequences, since consumers only buy new products if they are significantly improved.

Even so, in science there are always new surprises around the corner.  Scientists researching microchips are turning from simply shrinking things down to a small size, to finding new ways of applying what we learn from quantum mechanics in order to develop a radically different approach.

Optimists in this field claim that processors which consume only minute amounts of power will be faster and smaller than is even theoretically possible using our present day technology.  Nanotechnology may well provide an alternative to silicon, the substance currently used in microchip manufacture.

So next time your laptop feels heavy, remember we may someday do even better than Moore predicted.