Moore's Law no longer happening

[KBD]

I've been thinking about this lately. 5-6 years ago a computer that was a few years old really showed its age and was becoming useless. Today a computer that is 7-8 years old with a few upgrades holds it own and is a fast beast, especially running Linux. I think Linus is right, Moore's Law no longer exists:


Torvalds also doesn't see computer performance accelerating as quickly as it once did and he also doesn't believe that Moore's Law is still a reality. With Moore's Law the basic idea is that computing power doubles every two years, which Torvalds said really isn't happening anymore.

"Performance is not really doubling every two years and that's good," Torvalds said. "It means we'll maybe go back to the time when you cared more about performance on the software side and you had to be more careful and couldn't just rely on hardware getting better."
http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/to ... complexity

[j2mcgreg]

I'm not sure that's true. I think that the focus has shifted and that desktop / laptop progress is in a sort of holding pattern while phones and tablets play catch-up.

[Stevo]

I did see a post where the writer thought it actually going into a slow reverse at the moment, what with all the Meltdown and Spectre patches reducing performance somewhat.

[KBD]

I did see a post where the writer thought it actually going into a slow reverse at the moment, what with all the Meltdown and Spectre patches reducing performance somewhat.

It sounds like Intel did not want people to know just how badly those patches were slowing things down. It may be a situation where the cure is worse than the illness :(

[oops]

I'm not sure that's true. I think that the focus has shifted and that desktop / laptop progress is in a sort of holding pattern while phones and tablets play catch-up.

... Also, silicium becomes "has been" , diamond should be the next step.

[clicktician]

It's taking longer and longer for major advances to come within the reach of mere mortals because of market constraints, not technical ones.
In fact, many members of this forum frequently brag about how they run MX on ancient hardware discarded by Fred Flintstone, himself. And they're quite happy with that.

Today's most popular laptop processors are decade-old Celeron designs -- in spanking new Chromebooks that deliver very humble performance, but they're cheap, small, cool, quiet with long battery life.
To be fair, Gordon Moore did not predict anything about computer performance. He observed that the number of transistors on a silicon chip would double every 18 months or so.
Not to be picky, but his prediction was about miniaturization. That much has held true. And to be clear, Torvalds at LinuxCon was speaking about the frequent doubling in transistor density as well.

As evidence of Moore's economic folly, AMD's fabrication spin-off, Global Foundries, announced last week they are not going to bother tooling for 7nm manufacturing because it would cost $10 billion and they just don't think it would pay off.
I think Moore's miniaturization law hit its economic ceiling in 2017. Still, a 50 year-old prediction that has held thus far, is quite a tribute to Moore's vision. But, as co-founder of Intel and an exceptional business man, he should have known that the money always wins.

[oops]

You are probably right Clicktician. The new Moore's law is: more few nm, nanometers for customers, but only if few giga dollars more, G$ for the business.

[uncle mark]

True computing power may not be increasing at the rate it once did, but there have been spikes in several areas over the years that have had a huge impact on performance. Think broadband, memory, and SSDs.

[KBD]

True computing power may not be increasing at the rate it once did, but there have been spikes in several areas over the years that have had a huge impact on performance. Think broadband, memory, and SSDs.

Yes, broadband has been huge. It also helps that computers circa 4-7 years ago had dual core cpu's and upgrade-able ram. SSDs are definitely the next piece of the puzzle to keep older machines humming along. New computers by contrast do not appeal to me with paper thin construction that practically melt under heavy cpu use. Soldered on ram and, in some cases, a soldered on SSD that make these newer computers made for the garbage can out of the box.
I doubt I will ever buy another new laptop or desktop computer. I'll keep upgrading my old machines and may pick up another used laptop that is 3-4 years old.

[handy]

The jump in technology is "Quantum" computing. Its a whole new dimension of IT. It is so expensive at this point in time that only the likes of highly funded government departments & super wealthy corporations can afford play in that dimension - NSA - Chinese government & so on...