This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.
In the early years of aviation, one might have been forgiven for envisioning a future of ever-faster planes. Speeds had grown from what do computer engineers do per hour for the Wright brothers in 1903, to about 1000 kph for a Boeing 707 in the 1960s. But since then, commercial aircraft speeds have stagnated because higher speeds make planes so energy-inefficient.
Today’s computers suffer from a similar issue. For decades, our ability to miniaturize components led to us doubling the number of transistors on a silicon chip every two years or so. This phenomenon, known as Moore’s Law (named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore), has made computing exponentially cheaper and more powerful for decades. But we’re now reaching the limits of miniaturization, and so computing performance is stagnating.
This is a problem. Had Moore’s Law ended 20 years ago, the processors in today’s computers would be roughly 1000 times less powerful, and we wouldn’t have iPhones, Alexa or movie-streaming. What innovations might we miss out on 20 years from now if we can’t continue to improve computing performance?
In the early years of aviation, one might have been forgiven for envisioning a future of ever-faster planes. Speeds had grown from what do computer engineers do per hour for the Wright brothers in 1903, to about 1000 kph for a Boeing 707 in the 1960s. But since then, commercial aircraft speeds have stagnated because higher speeds make planes so energy-inefficient.
Today’s computers suffer from a similar issue. For decades, our ability to miniaturize components led to us doubling the number of transistors on a silicon chip every two years or so. This phenomenon, known as Moore’s Law (named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore), has made computing exponentially cheaper and more powerful for decades. But we’re now reaching the limits of miniaturization, and so computing performance is stagnating.
This is a problem. Had Moore’s Law ended 20 years ago, the processors in today’s computers would be roughly 1000 times less powerful, and we wouldn’t have iPhones, Alexa or movie-streaming. What innovations might we miss out on 20 years from now if we can’t continue to improve computing performance?
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