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February 20, 2003

Ars on Moore

Ars Technica has a great article on Moore’s Law, that oft-misquoted 1965 prediction about transistor budgets and manufacturing costs.

Moore’s Law is so perennially protean because its putative formulator never quite gave it a precise formulation. Rather, using prose, graphs, and a cartoon Moore wove together a collection of observations and insights in order to outline a cluster of trends that would change the way we live and work. In the main, Moore was right, and many of his specific predictions have come true over the years. The press, on the other hand, has met with mixed results in its attempts to sort out exactly what Moore said and, more importantly, what he meant. The present article represents my humble attempt to bring some order to the chaos of almost four decades of reporting and misreporting on an unbelievably complex industrial/social/psychological phenomenon.

Not too many other predictions about the future look so accurate nearly forty years on. So Moore’s 4 page paper deserves a careful look.

Posted by distler at February 20, 2003 8:48 AM

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