Report: IBM researcher says Moore's Law at end

Moore's Law is maxing out. This is an oft-made prediction in the computer industry. The latest to chime in is an IBM fellow, according to a report.

[Scrupuless]

To think we could always continue to improve any technology at such a rate was and is foolish.

[RememberThe357]

It's ambitious. Like the guy said, new technologies are coming forward. To think that technological development will slow down is foolish. Some one somewhere will always be pushing boundaries and coming up with newer and better ways to do things.

matthewkeates: I happen to disagree. I honestly think that technology will forever improve. I do not see any point of human history when technological improvement stopped. It is indeed foolish to think that the technologies that we have now can forever be improved upon, but it is not foolish to think that there will be new technologies to that will allow for even greater advancement. Call me a dreamer, but I see the future as boundless.

[Scrupuless]

I agree that we need ambition to push the forward the boundaries of human possibilities. However we should not blindly believe in an unfounded idea limitless technological advances, there are limits to what can be done, are we close to them at this point in time? I contend to not know the answer to that question, however that does not change the notion that to assume that technology will infinitly improve is in fact foolish.

I would also like to point out that I never said technoogical advancement would slow down, however it is in the realm of possibility.

[Guitardr85]

...But rather the way of things. Technology has always improved at an ever increasing rate. It has for thousands of years. Look at the life of a 16th century European and you can see that their life was pretty much the same when they died than when they were born...no real changes (and that's pretty much what was expected). Fast forward to now and our lives fundamentally change every few decades or so. Look at the past 20...internet, wireless information technologies...medical advances...these all make our lives very different then earlier in our lives. "I remember when we didn't have TV and had to walk 10000 miles to school in the snow" ~random old person.

The same concept is applied to computing technology. This rule is called the Law of Accelerating Returns which states that technology ALWAYS begets ever faster and better technology. To the person above who said that we are stupid to think that we will always get better technology at the rate we have been, I challenge him to find ANY POINT IN HUMAN HISTORY (or biological history for that matter) where this isn't true. If you plot major human advances along a regular line curve (not logarithmic) you see not only an exponential curve, but an exponential increase on said exponential curve.

Just because a guy at Intel says Moore's Law is coming to an end with current technology doesn't mean we're done making computers better. Educate yourself!!!!

Research memristors and quantum logic gates, most likely the next step in computing which makes todays supercomputers look like the vacuum tube computers of old.

It took billions of years for live to evolve from a single celled organism to a multi-celled, but only a thousand years for an organism called homo-Sapian Sapian to start creating its own life (genetics)!!!

[Kakkoii]

Nobody thought we could keep making chips smaller forever. So no one is surprised lol. Obviously we can only make the chips as small as the atomic structure would allow. 22nm has already been done. And 16 and 11nm are on the way. Although from 16 down, chip makers will be facing problems of quantum tunneling. And will need to move onto new materials, such as graphite. Once we max out chip size, which would be a chip who's gates are only 1 or 2 atoms thick. We will have to move onto new technology, such as a chip that uses optics to transfer data around the chip, increasing speeds further. We will be making 3D chips so we can pack a whole lot more power in a small amount of space. There will be a slow period of advancement in these times until we can reach a viable quantum computer.

It is amazing that we are getting close to working on the Atomic scale.

[Scrupuless]

@guitard

technology has not always improved and in fact devoluition is possible... we need look no further then the roman empire and all it "advanced" tech during its time that was lost due many variable reason, I will allow that eventually humans caught up and far surpassed there standard "tech". However I believe this highlights our ability to not only expand our tech but also lose tech due too many outside factors. Again i never claimed we are at the end of human technological advancement but i will say that it is foolish to believe that technology is limitless, there is no power in this universe that is infinte.

I would also like to point out that that the law of accelarating returns is a theory and is not termed as a rule. This theory is highly debatable and is certainly not set in stone. However on that note i do somewhat believe in the singularity concept but that does not mean that technology will always grow exponentially. I still contend there must be limits to technology and as I said before wehther we are at those limits or not i dont claim to know.

Side note homospaiens have been evolving for far greater time then a thousand years. So please check your "fact" before stating them as such.

[Guitardr85]

...At Matt...Touchette! That really is a valid point, though that devolution was wrought by war, bad economics, and ignorance rather than a limit in technology. I guess I should have phrased it as "technology in and of itself ever increases when free of outside influences". I mean I think we can both agree that we would have fusion power by now if only there was enough money being thrown at it!

[PS360PCROCKS]

You're all nerds :)

[EXCLUSIVEGAMER]

there are no limits. limits are created by simpleminded people who think they "CAN'T" do something.

[EXCLUSIVEGAMER]

think about this: had crysis come out 25 years ago, people would of thought the crysuit too far fetched to be reality.

Space travel? same thing. marine travel? people used to believe the world was square, like a map and i f you reached the edges you would fall off.

Its actually correlated to human understanding.

Time travel to most of us is still out of the question/ yet there are people working on this for decades now.

we dont understand it, so its unfeasible to us. to those that do understand, its within their grasp they just havent reached it yet

[rockleex]

Physical limitation.

There comes a point where you can no longer shrink a processor chip. Probably the smallest you can ever shrink a chip is to the size of a couple atoms.

Unless scientists find a way to utilize quantum mechanics for their technology.

But even then, there's a limit to quantum and everything in this universe... or is there? >:D

[Ju]

BTW: Timetravel...like UFOs always seam to land in the US, it seams nobody ever went back in time from the future - or we possibly would know by now...

[swinesucker]

the gutenberg press was in the 1500s

although I agree not much happened in the 16th century scientifically

but many innovations were made with architecture and certain aspects of art

[andyo13]

but not the limit of computing power. just cus we can't fit any more space into our hard drive doesnt mean its going to stop there in terms of space. there will simply be a new way of storing data. hell maybe one day we'll be able to store data on our tables in the wood itself. but.

remember how consoles used to be all about bits. well we made it to 64 bit but then we went back to 32 bit and have stayed there for years. the ps3 is 32 bit, the ps1 is 32 bit. it uses different tech to get greater graphics and performance.

moores law isnt at an end at all.

[Kakkoii]

@EXCLUSIVEGAMER: Wrong, there are things that are impossible. For example, can you jump to the moon right now? No? Didn't think so.

Over time we have come to understand more an more about matter and physics. We smash particles at near the speed of light to see what they are made of. When you get down to the very core of what makes up everything, it's energy. Our understanding is good enough to start claiming what is most likely impossible. We KNOW it's impossible to keep shrinking the size of a chip. Because the size of atoms are the limitation to that. Quantum computers are the next big step, with there being no downsizing with quantum computers. Just more Qubits being added. There may be one or 2 better technologies FAR down the road after quantum computers. It's hard to know for sure. Because yes we still don't know EVERYTHING. But we can make a pretty good guess in these times. Were not in the old days when we knew very little.

Also, time travel isn't possible. At least not into the past. Because time is not something that can be traveled through. That's the childish view of Time. Time is merely a measurement of events that happen in our universe. It is not a dimension or some force like gravity. It is a man made idea and structure for organization.

Now time travel into the future could theoretically be possible, but not in the sense one would think. It wouldn't be that your actually traveling into the future instantly, cause that is impossible. But you would be frozen so that you are no longer experiencing life. When you are reawoken, you are in the future. Seemingly instant to you.

[xabmol]

Says Hello.

[Kevin McCallister]

Love that guy. Just "borrowed" two of his books earlier today from work. I'm just not going to return them.

[phosphor112]

I remember first learning about him...on PBS xD

[Finalfantasykid]

I have Hyperspace and Physics of the Impossible w00t.

Also it should be noted that it was suspected that Moore's law would no longer hold true before multi-core processors. Now that we have dual/quad... core processors, it has lenghtened the life of Moore's law. However there will be a limit to how far silicon can go, it will reach it's limit and new materials will have to be used, or a complete overhaul will have to be made with digital circuits. Quantum computers are showing massive potential, I can't wait for the day when they become available, though that could be a while :P

[xg-ei8ht]

http://inventors.about.com/...

[Mutley416]

The Trekie in me also thinks that our tech will continue-

[Kinetix]

We will most likely be dead before this happens.

[ps92117]

I disagree, Moore's law may be coming to an end with the traditional silicon chip, but Quantum Computing research sound extremely promising, and though it may take a dacade, when ever it does arrive it will be a huge leap in terms of processing power. Also keep in mind that this only applies to processing power, but computers will continue to evolve in other fields, such as memory capacity, bandwidth and software optimization.

[Ju]

Hm, even if the computing power grows exponentially (say because Quantum computers will become the home computers of tomorrow), I am wondering, how a human brain can feed information or problems fast enough into these machine to process the outcome.

Say as an example of video games, you would need to create worlds which contain realistic details. I am not sure this will work with the traditional approach to create this worlds in a layout editor, since the complexity would require decades of work to be done to create this level of detail. If these machines do not introduce some sort of supporting AI (e.g. dynamically created worlds based on rules), it will be very difficult to harness this computing power.

I think the believe of human mankind that technology will always advance and will make life easier is an illusion and a pipe dream. Eventually this approach will simply make human life redundant.

[ps92117]

I disagree. The physics of water simple, the way it behaves was defined ages ago, yet you need the most powerful supercomputer to simulate an 1/8 squaremile correctly. Two decades ago videogames creators would have laughed at the concept of a gigabyte because they thought no program would ever need so much memory, but nowadays we have games running at 1 Terabyte. It will never get to a point that computers have so much power, that we wouldn't need it. Software becomes ever more complicated, and competition always aides in increasing it's complexity.

[Ju]

These machines make sense for specific tasks (tsunami warning and weather forecast amongst them), but in a time where art becomes more and more of a problem in video games, the increased visual complexity add, well, say more then linear to the costs of video games. Its not the possibilities which limit the level of detail, but simply the shear amount of work a still slow human has to pre-process to feed into these machines which causes the problem.

[Jen5en]

...we are nearing the end of the paradigm when it comes to this generation of computing. Once we surpass that, we will once more see rapid advancement in computational technology. Btw, the notion that it is foolish to assume that we can not keep progressing at this rate, is indeed foolish in itself. If we are assuming that the argument of technology advancing exponentially is true, then we should see computers surpassing the human brain (at least in terms of calculations per second) within the next decades. Time will tell, but I personally believe that present-day technology is only the humble beginning.

[Scrupuless]

first of all i would like to say that i never disagreed with any one who says theres potienally many more mind shifting paradigms that will probably put or tech and knowledge base to shame, what I did say is that it is not possible for technology to infinetly progress when we live in a finite reality. what kurzwell talks about is the singularity when computers became as animate and thoughtfull as humans. Only with the ability to process unfathomable amounts of information, which means we could not actually make an educated guess at what the singularity will bring us techological wise, due to the fact our brains could not fathom it. Like caveman had no knowledge of the sub atomic world that makes up matter, we could not possible claim to know how and what tech will progress in the distant future, like the atom bomb before us this tech could threating our very exsistence

[Guitardr85]

Another fellow neo-luddite!!!!!

[AuToFiRE]

we have reached the limit? no.. we will make new methods, new techniques and new materials to keep this law going. we depend on ever increasing power of electronics to run our world, we will not stop here.

[Scrupuless]

this is a very small minded comment with abosolutly no basis in fact or philosophy

[AuToFiRE]

small minded? i think you are the one with the small mind my friend, the only limit to technology, to our future, is the limit of each individual human imagination. there are many things we as a species have not discovered, there are things outside of our realm of physics that we have yet to explain, pushing forward and discovering these things are what drive mankind, we are not just going to stop because we cant go any further, we are going to break the rules, we are going to push ourselves until we do find something, then we will exhaust the capabilities of that and once again move on. just because transistors are nearly the size of an atom, doesnt mean we will stop there, we will find a way to make the transistors into the size of protons, neutrons, eventually even the electron itself, and even then we still dont know whats beyond an electron, there could be even smaller particles orbiting around that, the possibilities are endless to what we can achieve

[Xi]

he's said that the reasons for our exponential growth is ending. As software developers learn to do less with more the need for ever more powerful hardware is dropping significantly.

That's extremely different then the hitting the proverbial "glass ceiling", which wont happen for decades.

[hamsterfist]

I think it funny for those of you saying that technology will advance forever, then applying that train of thought to technologies that already exist. My point is how much has the hammer improved since it's inception? Or toilet paper? Sure it has by little amounts, but not to the point where we could not use the original item and not understand it's use. Eventually computers, game boxes, graphics cards, etc. will reach their "hammer" moment. That does not change the fact that new technologies will emerge, just perhaps unrelated to computing technologies.

[Guitardr85]

Yes the hammer has changed very little, but that is because its intended function was perfected and thus no change is needed. But you have to look at the fact that there are jobs that a "simple" hammer will not do...like building a skyscraper. Yes it's along the same lines of construction, but the technology has needed to increase to achieve bigger and better things. The computer is unlike the hammer in that the need for a bigger and better one will never be fulfilled, thus we will always make a better computer as opposed to a better hammer!!!

[fatstarr]

BUT for now its not happenin
just as you have a billion you have a trillion
computers will keep getting faster
it just takes time

but if you want to go against you can all agree with billgates
and lets throw away our ram because "640K ought to be enough for anybody."Bill Gates

if anything we are probbly just hitting the peak

because we are humans and we grow.