According to Moore's Law the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years since it's invention. Above is exhibit "A" in proof of this concept in action. Apple's number one selling device is (roughly) at least twice as powerful, a hundred times as portable(by weight), and three times as affordable than it was a decade ago because of this paradigm. It's exciting to compare these devices at this fundamental level and extrapolate it into the future. Moore's law is is supposedly going to begin a flattening of the growth curve within the decade barring any unpredicted advances in processor technology due to the limits of scale for molecular circuits. It should be noted that the same has been said about every decade since the advent of this convention, so it may be impossible to predict the exact limits of the exponential growth of data processing.
The main drawback to Moore's law is the intrinsic and perpetual obsolescence of our computing devices. The picture above is also exhibit "A" for this problem. I look forward to the same graphic a decade hence, and revel at the thought of remembering our quaint iPhone 4s in the same manner that I do now for the original iMac.
No comments:
Post a Comment