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Moore's Second Law (c2.com)
12 points by stcredzero on May 15, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments


People often forget this part of what Gordon Moore said. Perhaps the final barrier will not be technological, but economic in nature? (Reminds me of issues with access to space.)


I find that hard to swallow. We live in a world where things get cheaper with time. I'm sure the cost in some kind of absolute wealth measure increases very fast. But by this measure, a single one of today's factories would be completely unaffordable to humans a hundred years ago, but today we generate more wealth (in that absolute measure) in one day than we did in a year back then.

I'm sure the cost of these advanced factories is unfathomable to us today, but in X years, in proportion to the wealth available to build them, I believe they will be affordable.

As a final nail in the coffin, this assumes that our manufacturing processes remain more or less the same. What about, for example, nanomanufacturing? The promise of wide-spread nanomanufacturing is that anyone will be able to build cpus in their backyard...


I meant specifically for lithography and silicon. You've forgotten the precise wording of the first part of Moore's law, I see.




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