Apple’s unveiling of the iPhone at this year’s Macworld trade show quietly signaled the end of Moore’s Law as we know it. At the same time, it ushered in a new era of technical innovation, driven by a new understanding of Moore’s Law.

Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, noted in 1965 that the power of a chip doubles every 24 months, and the concept has been an industry obsession ever since, especially among PC makers. This fascination with faster processors was understandable. The units sold, often in dowdy beige boxes, at the rate of tens of millions every year and, in their slipstream, lifted everyone from commodity memory-chip and disc-drive makers to companies peddling operating systems.

But at the turn of the 21st century, PC penetration hit a silicon ceiling. The machismo of building powerful chips got a reality check, and it wasn’t pretty: Engineers began to run into a limit to how much they could cram into the processors without overheating and running down laptop batteries.

Business 2.0 — In a Web 2.0 world, Moore’s Law thrives – March 1, 2007

technorati tags:Moore’s, Law

Apple’s unveiling of the iPhone at this year’s Macworld trade show quietly signaled the end of Moore’s Law as we know it. At the same time, it ushered in a new era of technical innovation, driven by a new understanding of Moore’s Law.

Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, noted in 1965 that the power of a chip doubles every 24 months, and the concept has been an industry obsession ever since, especially among PC makers. This fascination with faster processors was understandable. The units sold, often in dowdy beige boxes, at the rate of tens of millions every year and, in their slipstream, lifted everyone from commodity memory-chip and disc-drive makers to companies peddling operating systems.

But at the turn of the 21st century, PC penetration hit a silicon ceiling. The machismo of building powerful chips got a reality check, and it wasn’t pretty: Engineers began to run into a limit to how much they could cram into the processors without overheating and running down laptop batteries.

Business 2.0 — In a Web 2.0 world, Moore’s Law thrives – March 1, 2007

technorati tags:Moore’s, Law