Talk:Moore's law/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

→

Archive 5

From Moores Law:

Early comments

"The law can be interpreted to both side. It is both a challenge to our industry to keep up the law as well as it is to break it."

Sorry, whatever does this mean??

---

Could we supplement the assertion that Moore's Law continues to hold with some data? i.e. a graph or chart relating year and transistor density.

Opening comments

Had anyone actually heard or read this stated by Moore firsthand? If yes, would you provide the reference please?

I've read that Moore vigorously objected the attempts to attribute this nonscience nonsence "law" to him. Unfortunately I have no reference either (otherwise I'd intervened into the article). Does anyone remember anything about this? I mean documented, rather than anecdotal.

mikkalai 21 Nov 2003

Thanks to Wernher for providing the reference. After reading the paper, I strongly suspect that nearly nobody who wrote about the Moore's law bothered to read the original paper. Besides the "law", it is interesting in itself. As for the "law", I can see now why Moore could object to assuming the authorship: the degree of twistedness of various popular formulations of Moore's law doubles every 18 months :-). Even wikipedia's previous text was pretty much senseless, if you think about it carefully for a minute: "the number of components on lowest-cost semiconductor chips doubles roughly every 12 months". No wonder G.Moore was pissed off.

mikkalai 21 Nov 2003

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4449711.stm A BBC news article from April 2005, complete with some words from an interview they conducted with him about the 40th anniversary of the original article. He seems to be backing it now, and the original magazine article authored by him is quite real (since Intel just paid 10,000 for an original copy of it).--Wingsandsword 23:56, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

.

Opening comments, another issue

Comment about using the analogy in the opening paragraph. "... If Moore's Law were applicable to the airline industry, a flight from New York to Paris in 1978 that cost $900 and took seven hours, would now cost about $0.01 and take less than one second." This sentence is nonsensical. The comparison is baseless. The two subjects have no foundation for this type of comparison and are completely different. Worse, this comparison provides absolutely no information to the reader or gives insight into Moore's law. Note that applying Moore's law to human evolution and the number of digits on our right hand, in 1978 human babies had 5, in 2006 human babies would have 81,920 fingers. Or perhaps compare this to the speed of light in 1978 and the speed of light now. These are almost as useless as the original comparison. A better analogy would be to apply this to something that is actually increasing or decreasing each year.

Also, the term 'now' should probably be replaced by some date, unless you want to keep updating this every day.

I removed this sentence. 88.73.211.151 13:31, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

There are images and lots of info about Moore's law here

66.167.137.70 08:05, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC): Intel has a presskit about the law's 40th anniversary. It offers photos and other bits which would be interesting to incorporate into Moore's law:

• http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/events/moores_law_40th/index.htm

This image in particular seems like a nice addition:

• ftp://download.intel.com/pressroom/images/events/moores_law_40th/Moores_Law_Original_Graph.jpg

Request for picture

I put up a request for picture of transistor counts plotted against the doubling rate. Cburnett 16:15, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Is this kind of thing of use? I'm not sure how to label it. If you were thinking of something else please let me know. -- Wgsimon 04:08, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good enough for me......and added. Thanks! Cburnett 04:18, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Could the intercepts of the trend lines be changed slightly? Is there any reason why the lines must both go through that one point (4004) and miss every other point? Moore made this statement in 1965, but the 4004 point is 1971. Maybe do a least-squares fit of the lines to the all the data (adjusting the intercept, but maintaining the two slopes), or even just the early portion of the data. --kris 20:33, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

That is a good idea. I will update the image. - Wgsimon 20:46, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

It would be nice to have a diagram showing the fujure projection of Moore's Law, incorporating any theoretical maximums. Rls 15:22, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Theres probably now theoretical maximum about how many calculations per second (well apart from something absurd like needing all the atoms in the universe or something), only limits on the size of the internal transistors, and who knows an entirely new method of doing operations may be developed. Rob.derosa 00:00, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it's about the time to update the picture to 2007. --Andrea Censi 08:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there enough images in this article now so that we can remove the "reqphoto" template? Jaqian (talk) 12:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Although the article seems fine to me, the template does ask for a photo rather than a graphic. I wonder if a photo of Moore would be good, especially lecturing, or perhaps a photo of the original magazine. - Wgsimon (talk) 17:29, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Quantum computers

I heard that the development of [[Quantum_computer]|Quantum Computers] so far also seems to follow Moore's law roughly, this may be relevant in the complexity discussion. Unfortunately I don't have any references. Erik Sandberg

100 GHz?

" ... could put 100 GHz personal computers in every home ... ": Is this true? 100 GHz means that one clock cycle lasts $10^{-11}$ seconds, and during that time, light can travel only about 3 mm. I think this means that a chip with high frequency and many transistors needs to include a very large number of primitive parallel CPUs; this leads to limitations that may be worth mentioning. Erik Sandberg

I think you don't fully understand all the implications of what you are saying. People keep finding ways to make smaller transistors, and ways to pack them closer together on a chip. Because photons require less time to travel across new versions of a chip that have been compacted to a smaller size, the new, smaller chip runs faster.

So if I can pack an entire room full of transistors (say, the ENIAC or the PDP-1) into a space much smaller than 3mm, it will run at 100 GHz.

Some people [1] claim that there is a huge demand for devices with a die size of less than 1 mm square.

I fail to see why such a device needs to include a very large number of primitive parallel CPUs, although that certainly seems to be a good idea.

Certainly all the limitations you can think of should go in the main article -- "transistors can't be made less than 1 atom wide", etc.

--DavidCary 05:59, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

This is all wrong. Clock frequency and chip size are independent. Mirror Vax 02:41, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

There is a limit on the clock frequency. Electronic theory says that for switching a transistor, a certain ammount of power (P) proportionate with current and voltage (I*V) dissipates. The current is the one needed for charging or uncharging the gate of the transistor with a certain treshold charge Q, or in formulas I = dQ/dt, with t the time. The gate acts as a condensator and thus electronic theory says that Q = C*V with C a constant. Electronic theory also states that the derivative of the voltage with respect to the time equals 2*pi * the clock frequency * V, or in formula notation: dV/dt = = 2*pi*f*V, with f the clock frequency. I summarise the equations:

1. P = I*V
2. I = dQ/dt
3. Q = C*V
4. dV/dt = 2*pi*f*V

Combination of equation 2 and 3, with C a constant results in I = C*dV/dt. Combination of this equation with equation 4 results in I = C'*f*V with C' = C*2*pi. Combination of this equation with equation 1 results in P = C'*f*V*V. This implies that if you double the clock frequency, you double the needed power.

While scaling the size of transistors exponentially, the treshold charge Q does not scale at the same rate. Therefore (nowadays) the powerconsumption of chips is the limiting factor on clock speed and the clock speed does not progress anymore according to Moore's law.

As the transistor scaling continues, it is possible to have multiple processor cores to make parallel calculations. However, as there is a limit on the power consumption, and the pace of the scaling is faster than the reduction in power efficiency, we will rather see multiple cores with a declining clock speed instead. The overall performance of processors does not follow the progress in scaling anymore, it is lagging behind.

--Toon Macharis 03:24, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

What Erik Sandberg wrote is quite reasonable. In fact my intention of visiting this discussion page was adding the limiting factor of speed of electricity. First, speed of electricity is lower than light speed. And, there is also a miniaturization limit. A transistor can't be smaller than an atom. Another important factor is memory. The power of computation depends on memory access speed. Maybe someday we can make a terahertz counter logic, but counting numbers is not a general purpose computation. The CPU has to access memory and memory takes big chip area, resulting slow access time. Thus, bigger the memory to access, slower access time, slower speed. The complex formulae above might be all true and I agree the first limit is power consumption today. But even if we supercool the chip and provide huge amount of power we can't pass a limit. It is "eternal computation limit". 1000 years later this limit will be there, there is no hope to pass it with this architecture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.108.36.24 (talk) 21:21, 4 September 2007 (UTC) User(85.108.36.24): Cenk Tengerli. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.108.36.24 (talk) 21:26, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Sematech

Would someone be able to create a Wikipedia entry for Sematech? -- Corvus 15:34, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Meaning?

The quote says

The complexity for minimum component costs has increased...

What does "for minimum component costs" mean? Does he look at the chip whose cost per transistor is minimal, and counts the number of transistors on the chip? Or does he look at the chip whose total cost is minimal, and counts the number of transistors on the chip? Or does he count the number of transistors per square millimetre rather than per chip? So basically I have four variants of the law, and the only one that I believe has any hope of being true is

• Take the chip whose cost per transistor is minimal, then count the number of transistors per square millimetre.

Is that the intended interpretation? Thanks, AxelBoldt 19:13, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Moore's Law Debunked

At the head of the article we've got a very scientific looking graph that says transistor count doubles every 24 months, and as 194.202.76.66 noted above, scientific-looking graphs are the sine qua non of scientific proof. Meanwhile, the "most common" formulation of the law is that it doubles every 18 months, and the original formulation is that it doubles every 12 months. Despite this, a whole bunch of credulous, unquestioning fools contributing to this article have managed to maintain the tone and the idea that Moore's law is a true fact as opposed to a disproved urban legend at best and, less diplomatically, a lying piece of crap. User:Anon 08:22, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

The figures I used to produce the graph were from here. I would be very interested in adding some more processors to the graph. Does anyone have any good sources? -- Wgsimon 16:02, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I don't have any problems with your graph. But personally, I think that your graph completely disproves Moore's law, even the 24 month version. I note that the Pentium III is way, way out of the curve and that it has barely more transitors than the Pentium II. I note that the Itanium actually has fewer transistors than the Pentium IV. And I note that with the later CPUs, you're including cache RAM, which gratuitously boosts the transistor count. 24.200.176.92 04:08, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Of course, I hadn't counted on your graph showing a doubling every 20 months. The accepted rate is closer to 26 months. 24.200.176.92 04:50, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The latest processors are Itanum 2s which are meant for HPC and the server market. Is it really fair to compare them against older desktop processors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.248.3.217 (talk) 11:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

NPOV versus scientifically proven facts

Some people seem to think that NPOV means we must support commonly believed misconceptions against the truth, even killing the truth. I hope most people don't believe this.

It is certainly worth noting in the article that the "Law" is nothing more than an observation that has held up in the post, with various caveats, which perhaps could be spelled out better. Moore himself has been caught offguard by the popularity of this so-called law. This can all be explained in the article in a NPOV manner, if proper sources can be found. Without all the information at our disposal that contradicts or qualifies the "Law", then you're right that the article is not as objective as it could be.—GraemeMcRae^talk 12:44, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I note with interest a recent edit by 24.200.176.92, which contains the following POV paragraph:

Between these two extremes lie an entire constellation of interpretations, almost all of them empirically false. The process of picking and choosing a particular interpretation from among all the ones possible and carefully arranging facts in order to support it has no basis in empirical science. Such a process if applied by any serious researcher would be condemned as fabrication of evidence.

The gist of the paragraph seems to be that Moore's law is the result of bad science. It argues strongly against a point that wasn't even made by the original article. Moore's law was never proposed as a law of science on the level of, say, Newton's inverse-squared law of gravity. Rather, the law was described in the article's topic sentence (until these recent edits changed it) in a relatively NPOV manner: Moore's law is the empirical observation that ...

Like 24.200.176.92, I don't want an edit war, but the article can't stand as it is. Instead, the text must explain what Moore's law is, and what it is not. It is an empirical observation, was popularized by Moore, a co-founder of Intel. It is not science. It characterizes growth of some measures as having been expoential in the past, when viewed over the course of several years. It doesn't suggest that the growth has been smooth; quite the contrary. Each new innovation in the design of computer hardware causes a "step" in the measure of growth.

The objections raised by 24.200.176.92 deserve due consideration, and should result, in the end, in a more factual and balanced presentation of Moore's law -- not by lambasting purveyors of junk science, but rather by stating clearly what Moore's law really is, and what its limitations are.—GraemeMcRae^talk 15:23, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that the introduction should contain a brief statement of what Moore's Law claims, followed by a brief summary of the issues discussed in the body of the article. If there are opposing points of view then one should not try and reconcile them in the introduction. There is definitely a place for a Criticisms of Moore's Law section or similar. It is important that objections are sourced and are not original research.

The sentence at the top of this section states that,

Some people seem to think that NPOV means we must support commonly believed misconceptions against the truth, even killing the truth. I hope most people don't believe this.

If Moore's Law is a commonly believed misonception, that misconception should still be stated in a clear and unambiguous way. It should be possible to do so without supporting or opposing it. The introduction appears to be aimed at debunking Moore's Law rather than stating what it is.

-- Wgsimon 18:19, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

It isn't my contention that Moore's law is the result of bad science. Moore's law is the result of no science and a massive self-propaganda campaign finding very fertile ground among a bunch of wishful-thinking types. Now, the "evidence" for Moore's law is the result of bad science but evidence doesn't really figure in the popular education and dissemination of Moore's law. What figures into it is bald, stone cold, mindless repetition. Moore's law is more a subject for social science than economics.

As for the contention that I was attacking the belief that Moore's law was a natural physical law ... oh come on! Could you have come up with a more credible red herring? First of all, Moore's law was originally proposed as an economic law and that's exactly how I treated it. Now, economic laws aren't inviolable but they're still supposed to be true as approximations. Moore's law isn't even true as an approximation (ie, if you assume a constant exponential) only as a generality.

And secondly, it seems to me that people are quick to forget that "empirical" without any qualifiers, is generally interpreted as meaning "true". Especially so when used in conjunction with "observation" and other scientific-sounding terms. So "the empirical observation that blah blah" tends to mean, to most people, that blah blah is a true fact. The category of "false empirical observations" doesn't really register in people's minds unless it's explicitly pointed out with words such as false, myth, delusion, illusion, disproved, unproved, et cetera. And then there are the really neutral ways of saying it like hypothesis, theory, conjecture, claim, statement, et cetera. Pick your poison, I'll take any one.

You know, these are really very standard words in science with very narrow, highly-codified meanings. And empirical -> true fact of reality. Oh yeah, and the codified meaning of "law" is a concrete statement (such as "exactly 90% of everything is crap"). The correct code word for a generality (such as Moore's law is) is 'principle'. The Moore principle wouldn't have implied that there is a rigorous interpretation of it, whereas the very name "Moore's law" implies that there is. Since this is factually wrong, Moore's law is simply false. Well, technically it's "merely" an oxymoron but being an oxymoron is a really bad thing to be for something that claims to be a Law.

Finally, I don't think it's too much to ask of an introduction that it include the single word false in there somewhere. I mean, you've got a whole phrase about who it's attributed to. What's a single word, on an infinitely more important aspect than the mistaken origins of Moore's law, compared to an entire phrase? 24.200.176.92 03:59, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

First of all, the term "Moore's law" is widely used and it is not for us to change it. The common usage of the term "law" extends beyond a proven scientific principle, e.g. Murphy's law. The real problem here seems to be coming up with a valid single benchmark for measuring progress in computing. This parallels other problems in econometrics, such as measuring poverty or inflation. Often arbitrary decisions have to made to come up with a number that can be tracked, however, no one seems to have done this for the computer industry. And arbitrary decisions can cause difficulties over long time periods. The shift to onboard cache leads to higher transistor counts, on the other hand, the shift to hardwired instructions instead of microcode, may have gone the other way. What processor type to use as a benchmark, and when in its life cycle, is another problem. And the goal itself keeps shifting. Apple's switch to Intel was justified on Apple's realization that MIPS per watt is a more important consideration than MIPS per chip. I therefore think it is misleading to say Moore's law is false. It was never intended as a exact prediction, but as a rough approximation and in that sense it seems to have held up pretty well. --agr 20:50, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Okay, "first of all" Moore's law is a bunch of crap. And the "real problem" is that Moore's law is a bunch of crap. Now, I don't know about you but I don't think that a wikipedia article is an appropriate place for you to put up your personal opinions and your own original research. Because that's exactly what you're advocating when you say that "the real problem here seems to be coming up with a valid single benchmark for measuring progress in computing" as if it's anyone here's job to do so. It isn't, it's our job to point out that nobody else has ever managed to do so. Everything else you say is so much meaningless droning blah blah blah. And "it is misleading to say Moore's law is false" WHAT THE FUCK? And "it was never intended as an exact prediction, but as a ...." Someone should spank you for blatantly contradicting the facts as we both know them. 24.200.176.92 17:33, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Moore's law for IQ when people will be genetically engineered

When we will find the genes that affect intelligency, it is possible that will will start genetically engineer ourselves to more intelligent. It is reasonable that these new more intelligent people will be able to even more improve the intelligency of their descendents, simply because they will be more intelligent. That closed loop of self-reengineering and self-improvement, which is likely to be exponential because of two factors improving each other - just like the computing power makes designing computing power exponential, the brain power would make improving brain power exponential.

---

^ What the hell is this hogwash? Why is it here? Darren

What do you find to be hogwash about it? If genes have something to do with intelligence (which seems a plausible conjecture, although by no means entirely proven, given that human genes differ from chimpanzee genes, and the two species also differ in average intelligence), if such genes are susceptible to genetic engineering, then it seems quite reasonable to wonder if a feedback loop will occur, in which scientists make themselves increasingly smarter, enabling the augmented scientists to invent ways to make themselves smarter still. This seems directly analogous to a process which helps drive Moore's Law: engineers using the current generation of computers to design the next generation of still-faster chips. The whole mental phenomenon of invention has been only vaguely understood. Throughout history, humans have depended on the random appearance of rare people who somehow happen to have inventive skill (and not all cultures have been equally hospitable to inventive types). This is similar to the way hunters depend on the happenstance appearance of wild game, in contrast to farmers, who alter the environment to make it more productive for human use. If human intelligence can be engineered, it might trigger a cultural change comparable to the switch from hunting to agriculture. Anyway, the relation to Moore's Law is that genetic engineering technology relies heavily on computers; as computers get better, they drive progress in fields that depend on computers. --Teratornis 01:38, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Phenomenology

"Moore's Law" is Phenomenology. This is a scientific word meaning "I drew a curve through the points by eye" :-). No baggage about "validity", no claims other than "you can see that the curve goes more or less near the points". Then, as a separate second act, there is Extrapolation. This is widely recognized as involving Implicit Assumptions, and if you want even minimal credibility, you are obliged to make the assumptions explicit; and because the assumptions are not data, what you are doing at this point is Speculation not Science. Of course, in a country where science is a spectator sport, all of this is easily overlooked.

Why does this article get the basic facts wrong in its opening statement?

Moore's "Law" is not about computing power. It's about the number of features (e.g., transistors) that can be placed on an area of silicon.

• http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/moore.ars/1
• http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/Moores_Law.html
• http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci212591,00.html
• http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/EDN/2002/09/26/241741
• http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/04/the_myths_of_mo.html

What's the easiest way to permanently correct this article?

Press the edit button and then get going with your keyboard. If you make mistakes others will correct you, SqueakBox 17:34, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

The error was introduced in November 2005 by User:24.200.176.92. There is no way to permenently correct the article. Mirror Vax 17:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Well except by reediting it afresh, SqueakBox 17:48, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Or we could revert it to [2]. This is what the anon did [3], SqueakBox 17:52, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Improving image

The chart is nice and all, but it's very Intel-specific. Maybe we could put some other processors on there too, like AMD? Last I checked AMD had more of the desktop CPU market than Intel did! -- 04:25, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

That would be good. If anyone has a link to information about other processors, please let me know. -- Wgsimon 19:13, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

How about this page right here?

Excellent -- Wgsimon 15:06, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I actually wandered over to the talk page on a similar issue. I'm no computer expert, but AMD has 65 nm chips this year too, right? I feel like that's worth mentioning. I feel that the article is generally Intel-biased (although not enough to warrant a NPOV tag or anything), and I might come back to it later if I can do enough research. --ZachPruckowski 06:15, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

There's a reason the "law" does not mention non-intel chips. The law is purely a marketing tool used by - you've guessed it - Intel! To try to add other processors to it, not only appears to give the thing some objective justification it does not deserve, but also constitutes original research. --Necessaryx 15:30, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

"Moore's Law is the 1965 prediction by Gordon Moore (co-founder of Intel) that the transistor density of semiconductor chips would double roughly every 18 months." (markup removed)
Actually, this is similar to other definitions I've seen in that it doesn't mention any chip companies. Why then do we have to restrict the article's analysis to Intel chips? Brian Jason Drake 10:23, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Well I dunno if this is out of place, but the image of Moore's law seems a bit outdated. (No not the note he wrote by hand but the other ofcourse. ;)) I mean, this graph shows Intel processors up till 2004 but at the time of this post it's 2007 and a cr*p load of new Intel chips are already on market. (Dualcore, quadcore even...) So isn't that note worthy? Same goes for the image about the HDD capacities. 14:09 (UTC) 29 March 2007

I think the content of the image but it is hard to read. The text is too small. The original image it is taken from needs to be larger so that we can read the names of the individual processors, even if it has to be sized down to fit in the article. 72.194.124.25 (talk) 00:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

The size of the image is now bigger on the image page so when you click on the image in the article you can read the names. Wgsimon (talk) 01:37, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Future(?) trends

"As of Q1 2006..."

Since I am an Australian, when I saw that I initially thought July 2006, but that seems a bit far into the future... Brian Jason Drake

Kryder's Law

I edited the paragraph on Kryder's Law to reflect the discussion going on there (namely, it is not better but equal to Moore's, as well as it hasn't been doing to well lately). David Souther

Get ready to edit it again. Kryder's Law is on AfD, and undergoing heavy edits. How would you feel about a merge of Kryder's Law into a section of this article dealing with laws affecting other computing parts. Maybe move the Wirth's Law reference into that section to, as well as the few sentences about other parts in the same section Kryder's Law is now? --ZachPruckowski 08:42, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

18 or 24 months?

Moore's law is not ambiguous at all. It was stated that the number of components on microprocessors doubles every two years, not 18 months. There is confusion with the doubling of performance, which is indeed supposed to double every 18 months (but really does every 20 months or so).

See this transcript of a conversation with Gordon Moore, more specifically paragraph 3:

ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Video-Transcripts/Excepts_A_Conversation_with_Gordon_Moore.pdf

QcRef87 19:12, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Yep that makes sense. Everyone who usually speaks of 18month also says performance. Be bold include the source and edit it yourself.Slicky 06:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

There's a source already there, but people that don't bother to read change the number to 18 on occasion. Fixed again. — Aluvus ^t/c 06:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Why, if this is so clear, does this article use the 18 month number so many times?? 205.157.110.11 23:00, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I made some fixes, including a comment in the lede warning people not to change it back to 18 ... richi 21:12, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Removal of reference to "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy"

I would like to suggest the removal of Moore's Law being quoted as a self-fulfilling prophecy in the Industry Driver section. It clearly cannot be considered an sfp due to the fact that it is an ongoing condition, one in which it may today hold true but tomorrow become false. A prophecy by its very nature is absolute and not something which is constantly ongoing. Enigmatical 04:20, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Engelbart reference

This sentence: However, Moore had heard Douglas Engelbart's similar observation, possibly in 1965. and the next sentence, have been in most versions of the article since April 17, 2005. The "similar observation" attributed a date of "possibly 1960" by its original editor, which was evidently changed to 1965 to conform better with the fact that ICs were not invented until 1959. What source can be given to substantiate this entry? --Blainster 22:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, did the search myself. The Engelbart entry was prompted by this NYTimes article of April 17, 2005. It is interesting, but it merely says that Engelbart gave some talks in 1960 that expressed the conviction that ICs would become smaller. He suggested no development rate, which is what Moore's law is about. I think the Engelbart entry should be removed from the intro, and if kept at all, be moved to the history section. --Blainster 23:01, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

the more things change...

---

the more they remain the same. Trying to build complexity in a system is not worth it.

To get to A-Class, this may be helpful

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and may or may not be accurate for the article in question.

• Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at WP:LEAD. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.
• Per WP:CONTEXT and WP:MOSDATE, months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.
• There may be an applicable infobox for this article. For example, see Template:Infobox Biography, Template:Infobox School, or Template:Infobox City. (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually)
• Per WP:MOSNUM, there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 18mm, use 18 mm, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 18 mm.
• Per WP:MOSNUM, when doing conversions, please use standard abbreviations: for example, miles -> mi, kilometers squared -> km², and pounds -> lb.
• Per WP:MOSNUM, please spell out source units of measurements in text; for example, "the Moon is 380,000 kilometres (240,000 mi) from Earth.
• Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally do not start with the word "The". For example, ==The Biography== would be changed to ==Biography==.
• Please alphabetize the categories and/or interlanguage links.
• There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view. For example,
  • it has been
  • might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).
• As is done in WP:FOOTNOTE, for footnotes, the footnote should be located right after the punctuation mark, such that there is no space inbetween. For example, change blah blah [2]. to blah blah.[2]
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that the it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a.

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions (and the javascript checklist; see the last paragraph in the lead) for further ideas. Thanks, Wim van Dorst (Talk) 22:14, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Moore's Second Law

I've just read about the less known "Moore's Second Law". [4] [5] I don't know whether this Second Law deserves a new article or it should be explained in this one. Any thoughs? --surueña 18:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)