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Re:The numbers that explain Intel’s decline by bbarnett on Thursday November 24, 2022 @01:09PM (#33734422)
The days of Moore are over.

I have heard this repeated for almost 30 years. Are they really?

Or are they one discovery away from continuing?

Re:The numbers that explain Intel’s decline by marcosdumay on Thursday November 24, 2022 @01:40PM (#33734796)
Yes, for some 10 years at least.

If you go read what his article said, it's very clear and incontestable ended. Still, that doesn't stop a bunch of people that have no idea what Moore's Law was about from claiming whatever they want to.

Anyway, where did you hear Moore's Law ended 30 years ago? That one doesn't make sense.

Re:The numbers that explain Intel’s decline by CyberDildonics on Thursday November 24, 2022 @08:55PM (#33738302)
Yes, for some 10 years at least.

You are thinking of denard scaling. Transistors have been shrinking and counts have been increasing.

Anyway, where did you hear Moore's Law ended 30 years ago?

People were saying it was going to end, not that it already ended.

Re:The numbers that explain Intel’s decline by marcosdumay on Friday November 25, 2022 @08:24AM (#33742135)
The most superficial and literal reading of Moore's Law is "the number of transistors on the most economical package doubles every X months" where X changed a bit over the decades.

Not only has the number of transistors on the largest package not followed an exponential for a decade (a good hint is that people denying it repeats the law with X changed on every single iteration), but as fabs adopt more and more complex processes, the number of transistors on the most economical package has been growing very slowly, with no perspective of a doubling any soon.

On a deeper reading, the Moore's paper is all about the economics of semiconductor fabrication. And not only companies that aren't on the most advanced process are not failing as they used to, but nobody is using the law anymore to size investments.

There is just no way to read Moore's Law and interpret it into something that still exists.

> People were saying it was going to end, not that it already ended.

Oh, so you meant to say that they were correct?

Re:The numbers that explain Intel’s decline by CyberDildonics on Friday November 25, 2022 @11:29PM (#33749961)
Transistor counts keep going up
Re:The numbers that explain Intel’s decline by nine_k on Thursday November 24, 2022 @01:40PM (#33734785)
Any one discovery isn't going to suffice. Building a bunch of technologies to make that discovery usable and profitable is hard and long work.

We know for years that carbon nanotubes can make great, very compact, very fast transistors. There's nothing close to a practical application of this discovery, because we barely know how to make nanotubes in tiny amounts, a handful of labs, at a great expense.

Re:The numbers that explain Intel’s decline by AnimalMuppet on Thursday November 24, 2022 @01:54PM (#33734970)
The graph of CPU density, clock speed, etc has a kink in it a decade or two ago. So, yeah, at least what we thought of as "Moore's Law" is dead, and has been for a while.

Dennard scaling broke down around 2005 or 2006.

Are we one discovery away? No, probably not. Leakage current isn't a "one trick" problem, especially as the features continue to get smaller. It's a fundamentally hard problem, and as you go to smaller feature sizes, it keeps getting harder. As we go to 3D approaches, thermal issues probably aren't "one trick" away either.

Re:The numbers that explain Intel’s decline by Someone on Thursday November 24, 2022 @02:05PM (#33735078)
Have you? There were plenty of people predicting Moore’s law would end in x years (e.g. https://www.technologyreview.com/2000/05/01/236362/the-end-o..., from 2000), and some people (including Moore himself) argued that progression had slowed a bit, but I don’t remember anybody saying the law already had ended at any time.

(Unless you use an extremely strict definition of it, of course. I don’t think that’s reasonable, though, given, reading https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220166914_The_Lives..., that even Moore changed the definition a few times)

Re:The numbers that explain Intel’s decline by criddell on Thursday November 24, 2022 @02:20PM (#33735211)
Herb Sutter (Microsoft C++ guy) has been talking about the twilight of Moore’s law since 2005ish and I think he’s right.

http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm