The Multiple Lives of Moore's Law

A HalF Century Ago, a young engineer named Gordon E. Moore took a look at his fledgling industry and predicted big things to come in the decade ahead. In a four-page article in the trade magazine Electronics, he foresaw a future with home computers, mobile phones, and automatic control systems for cars. All these wonders, he wrote, would be driven by a steady doubling, year after year, in the number of circuit components that could be economically packed on an integrated chip. A decade later, the exponential progress of the integrated circuit-later dubbed "Moore's Law" - showed no signs of stopping. And today it describes a remarkable, 50-year-long winning streak that has given us countless forms of computers, personal electronics, and sensors. The impact of Moore's Law on modern life can't be overstated. We can't take a plane ride, make a call, or even turn on our dishwashers without encountering its effects. Without it, we would not have found the Higgs boson or created the Internet. But what exactly is Moore's Law, and why has it been so successful? Is it evidence of technology's inevitable and unstoppable march? Or does it simply reflect a unique time in engineering history, when the special properties of silicon and a steady series of engineering innovations conspired to give us a few decades of staggering computational progress?