Comments on: Moore's Law, Illustrated

Moore's Law, Illustrated

beagle — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:15:37 -0800

A nice photogallery, with descriptions, illustrating the progress of Moore's Law from a 1958 single-transistor Texas Instruments integrated circuit to the anticipated 2009 AMD Phenom II, with 758,000,000 transistors.

By: leotrotsky

leotrotsky — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:27:21 -0800

758,000,000. That's a hell of a lot of soybeans.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:28:05 -0800

in 2009 our chips will grow on corncobs!

By: grouse

grouse — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:31:26 -0800

This is pretty sweet. Some are really beautiful. And I never before now realized that such a high fraction of modern CPU die area is devoted to L1 cache.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:31:29 -0800

Also, there was a post with most of these pictures -- but far fewer ads -- a couple months ago.

By: chlorus

chlorus — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:33:50 -0800

758,000,000 transistors. I bet that baby pulls in KFWB loud and clear at night.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:38:28 -0800

I feared it was Archer Daniels Midland growing integrated circuits in seeds that are smart enough to fix their own prices.

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:47:07 -0800

And I never before now realized that such a high fraction of modern CPU die area is devoted to L1 cache. That's the L2.

By: papercake

papercake — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:48:06 -0800

Wow. That's breathtaking and mindboggling.

By: Hactar

Hactar — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:01:04 -0800

Wow. Just wow. MOMA has the blueprints for the 8086 (I think) on display in its design exhibition.

By: grouse

grouse — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:01:07 -0800

Er, thanks Krrrlson. Sorry about that.

By: ruwan

ruwan — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:09:33 -0800

What's really mind boggling is that they flew to the moon on 4 transistors!!

By: wastelands

wastelands — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:24:38 -0800

Very cool. I knew a guy who helped design chips at Intel. He was bleary-eyed from staring through a microscope all day.

By: happyroach

happyroach — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:52:53 -0800

Huh. So they fit a lot more processors on a chip. Meanwhile, I'm still using essentially the samme interface that I used twenty years ago. And the programs I'm using are nearly identical to the ones I was using fifteen years ago, except with some additional bells and whistles. And more importantly, I'm still using the computer for the same damn things. So just where the hell is the revolution?

By: Amanojaku

Amanojaku — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:15:15 -0800

So just where the hell is the revolution? Well, you probably weren't doing much internet surfing twenty years ago, so there's that. And anyway, Moore's Law predicts technological improvement, not human innovation, which is the proverbial black swan, so actively looking for the Next Thing doesn't usually do much good.