Moore's law

File:Transistor Count and Moore's Law - 2011.svg

Plot of CPU transistor counts against dates of introduction. The vertical scale is semi-logarithmic; the line corresponds to exponential growth with transistor count doubling every two years.

File:Osbourne Executive (34 365).jpg

Osborne portable computer from 1982, and 2007 Apple iPhone. The Osborne Executive weighs 100 times as much, takes nearly 500 times as much space, cost about 10 times as much (adjusting for inflation), and has 1/100th the clock frequency of the phone.

Moore's law is that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles about every two years. Intel executive David House said the period was "18 months". He predicted that period for a doubling in chip performance: a combination of the effect of more transistors and their being faster.

The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who described the trend in his 1965 paper. The paper stated that the number of components in integrated circuits had doubled every year from the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 until 1965 and predicted that the trend would continue "for at least ten years". His prediction has proved very accurate. The law is used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development.

The capabilities of many digital electronic devices are strongly linked to Moore's law: processing speed, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras. All of these have improved at (roughly) exponential rates as well.

This exponential improvement has greatly increased the effect of digital electronics in the world economy. Moore's law describes a driving force of technological and social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

This trend continued for more than half a century. Intel stated in 2015 that the pace of advancement has slowed. Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel, announced that "our cadence today is closer to two and a half years than two".

Moore's Law Media

• Moore's Law Transistor Count 1970-2020.png

  A semi-log plot of transistor counts for microprocessors against dates of introduction, nearly doubling every two years

• The Moore's Law Update — for 128 years - 54181414828.jpg

  This graph demonstrates how Moore's law has largely held since about 1965 and how progress prior to 1965 was slower.

• NAND scaling timeline.png

  The trend of MOSFET scaling for NAND flash memory allows the doubling of floating-gate MOSFET components manufactured in the same wafer area in less than 18 months.

• Threshold formation nowatermark.gif

  A simulation of electron density as gate voltage (Vg) varies in a nanowire MOSFET. The threshold voltage is around 0.45 V. Nanowire MOSFETs lie toward the end of the ITRS road map for scaling devices below 10 nm gate lengths.

• Graphene SPM.jpg

  Scanning probe microscopy image of graphene in its hexagonal lattice structure

• Intel.svg

  Intel transistor gate length trend. Transistor scaling