<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000'><BR><FONT face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">----- Original Message -----<BR>From: "Ken Schuster" <ken@kschuster.org><BR>To: beowulf@beowulf.org<BR>Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2009 2:29:17 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern<BR>Subject: [Beowulf] Moores Law is dying<BR><BR></FONT>
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<DIV><FONT face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">>An IBM researcher says Moore's Law is running out of gas. IB</FONT><FONT face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">M Fellow Carl Anderson, who</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">>oversees physical design and tools in its server division, predicted the end of </FONT><FONT face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">continued exponential</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">>scaling down of the size and cost of semiconductors: </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">>"There was exponential growth in the railroad industry in the 1800s; there was exponential</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">>growth in the automobile industry in the 1930s and 1940s; and there was exponential growth</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">>in the performance of aircraft until [test pilots reached] the speed of sound. But eventually</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">>exponential growth always comes to an end," said Anderson. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">Mmm ... he may be right, but I do not like his historical references which seem</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">to conflate engineering and economics. Better to refer to the improvement in</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">magnets or something similar. But, I like the speed of sound reference because</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">it suggests that there is a Moore's Law barrier to be broken. There is a lot of</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">talk about "walls" these days ... the memory wall, the power wall, ... but we with</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">respect compute power we have a ways to go before we reach the Bremermann Limit.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">rbw</FONT></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR></div></body></html>