Moore’s Law

Moore’s Law

On April 19, 1965, in its 35th anniversary edition, Electronics magazine ran an article, “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,” by Fairchild Semiconductor’s Gordon Moore, a brilliant chemist and technician. Moore postulated that microchip complexity – the number of transistors a silicon microchip contains – would double every year or so as manufacturing costs continually decreased. This is Moore’s Law, the “central theorem of the digital age.” Moore wrote that miniaturization and lower costs of transistors would combine with an exponential increase in power to transform the world.

Since that article, computing expenses have shrunk drastically and electronic component costs have dropped “more than a billionfold.” Silicon chip technology drives computers, TVs, radios, smartphones, automobiles, airplanes, equipment, video gaming, the Internet, the cloud and robotics. The silicon-based transistors that Moore helped pioneer are the most manufactured products in the world and the most essential components of modern life. Moore’s article did not get much notice at the time of its publication, but eventually, everyone recognized its wisdom...