Computers May Be Slowing Down

Computers May Be Slowing Down

Summary: In Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, wrote a paper that made the observation that computers will double in speed every two years. This maxim, now called Moores Law, has held true for decades. It would appear now however that within the next ten years Moores Law may no longer be valid.

Moores Law specifically refers to the number of transistors that can be placed on a computer chip, and how that number could easily be doubled by manufacturers every two years. M...

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Article Body: In Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, wrote a paper that made the observation that computers will double in speed every two years. This maxim, now called Moores Law, has held true for decades. It would appear now however that within the next ten years Moores Law may no longer be valid.

Moores Law specifically refers to the number of transistors that can be placed on a computer chip, and how that number could easily be doubled by manufacturers every two years. Manufactures have readily met the requirements of this law since its inception, and as of the transistors that are applied to computer chips will be so small that over . million of them would fit on the head of a pin.

Gordon Moore now says that by the laws of physics will catch up to computer chip manufacturers and Moores Law will no longer be a valid measuring tool. Mr. Moore revealed this information while speaking about the new Intel chip being marketed as the Penryn Processor. This new chip will not be widely available till , and its circuitry is nanometers wide ( billionth of a meter wide) and contains over million transistors.

The fact that Moores Law specifically refers to number of transistors and not computing speed has now become important. The two have been used interchangeably for decades, but it would seem that can no longer be the case. Many experts believe that although the laws of physics will break down Moores Law, computing speed will continue to increase at the same rate or possible even faster. This will be done through alternative methods of chip manufacturing. One type of alternative manufacturing is called nanotechnology which would focus on putting chips together a single molecule at a time. Jim Tully at Gartner group said, You might refer to this new breed of chips as molecular devices. Science fiction may become science fact over the next decade as these molecular devices are even now in development.

While faster chips are a concern for the manufactures, utilizing this speed is the concern of the end user. Chips that contain billions of transistors are irrelevant if the software the computer is running cannot take advantage of the speed. This has been the case with Windows XP of late, and one of the reasons Microsoft released Vista. The new software is designed to take better advantage of newer and faster chips as well as higher degrees of computer memory. Although the Vista bit version only uses up to gig of RAM (same as XP), the Vista bit version can support gig of RAM or more, says Dan Crawford, former Microsoft employee and software enthusiast. There are no PCs currently capable of actually accepting gig of RAM so this issue should be moot for a long time.

Once software producers catch up to the chips available even now, the speed in which users enjoy on there computers will be greatly increased. Chip speed is still an important concern, but perhaps not more so than the ability to actually utilize that speed on a regular basis.