Iria

Source: ExtremeTech
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Gartner analysts Brian Gammage and Carl Claunch debated Moore's Law on Tuesday, arguing whether the defining rule that governs today's computer industry should be seen as a force for good or evil—or possibly a mixture of both.

Before launching into their talk, the two noted that its original title was "Why Moore's Law is Evil," which while neither admitted as much, would have been an inappropriate appellation seeing as the two analysts really just took turns playing good cop-bad cop for an hour, alternating between the negative and positive implications attributed to the famous law coined by Caltech professor Carver Mead.

Matth

The burning question was always, when will Moore's law break down.

Also, the original "doubling of component density" somehow got translated into "doubling in performance" could also provide double the number of chips, from the same wafer, hence the push to geometry shrinks, even if performance does not improve.

So what it realy means is:
1. The same chips (shrunk) should cost less to make, though process development eats into those savings.
2. Smaller geometries should use less power, and potentailly be faster.
3. Keeping chips the same size, they could be made more complex, though to pass the current X32/X64 stage would mean either a total loss of compaibility, or the uptake of significant new features. Dual (or more) core seems too be the current feature, and either multithreaded software, or multiple tasking of single threaded software, is required to take much advantage.

The barrier is definitely in sight, unless the PC platfom is starting down a "massively multicore" direction, or unless another new set of instructions arrives, greater than the SSE / SSE2 / SSE3 evolution. The era of ever increasing clock speed seems to be over.

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Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread

Paradox Enigma

The last time I checked, Moores law was merely an observation.

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...thread killer...

Judas

i doubt the clock speeds are going to stop at all... they have essentially hit the same stiff wall that the orginal Mhz clocks hit. oventually they pulled through, found new ways to ramp up the speeds.

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Matth

An observation in progress, which then transformed into a target and expectation in progress which has defied many previous predictions of breakdown, though ultimately, it must break down.

PS. A fine illustration of the "denser = smaller" side of the coin, from a site usually more concerned with megavolts than microchips.
http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/shrinkingchip.html

__________________
Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread