Moore's Law Illustrated

Images

	Eniac, 1946 17,468 vacuum tubes
Intel 8080, 1975 4,500 transistors
	Intel Pentium Pro, 1995 5.5 million transistors

Numbers

	This is what the curve would look like if computer chips' power stayed the same over the years.
This is what the curve would look like if the chips' power improved arithmetically -- for example, if every two years it increased by a constantly added number.
	Here's what actually happened. It's like a roller coaster. At the beginning it seems as though not much is happening. Then all of a sudden, whoosh!! If you look at curves of Internet traffic, you'll see that we're just starting on the up-slope.
This is what happens to the curve above when you change the y-axis to increase not by a constantly added number but by a constantly multiplied number. It straightens the line again, but don't be fooled. You're still on a roller coaster.

Numbers so big (and small) I can only chuckle

If a digital cell-phone was made with vacuum tubes instead of transistors, it would occupy a building larger than the Washington Monument.

1,000,000,000

transistors on a chip by the turn of the century

The patterns etched onto these chips will be as complicated as a road map of the entire planet shrunk to the size of a fingernail.

500,000,000

transistors manufactured every second last year

5,000,000

transistors in a typical integrated circuit

.000001 cents

price of a transistor today

During the 1950's, the cost went from $45 to $2. Do you recognize that curve?

sources I found the 8080 and Pentium Pro images on Ed Lazowska's site at the University of Washington. He got them from The Intel Museum. The Eniac photo is available there and many other places.  The curves are standards for mathematics classes. The big numbers come from the humorously illustrated back page of "Solid-state Century", Scientific American's Special Issue from last winter. It has an interview with Gordon Moore; the full text is available on their site. The whole issue has clear illustrated explanations of transistors and how they work; I recommend it highly.

In the Scientific American I mentioned above is an article called "Technology and Economics in th Semiconductor Industry." It details the forces and breakthroughs that have validated Moore's "law," in truth, more a prediction. After reading that article, you should have a clearer picture of the future. Which article did you find most illuminating?

last update: July 22, 2000
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