Intel’s co-founder Moore whose law you should know is dead

Gordon Moore, co-founder of computer chips maker Intel Corporation and inventor of the Moore’s Law, is dead.

Mr Moore passed away Friday at 94. A San Francisco native, he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics in 1954 at the California Institute of Technology.

He co-founded Intel in 1968 with Robert Noyce and Andrew Grove. Before then, in 1965, he proposed what later became Moore’s Law, a guiding principle for the semiconductor industry, helping engineers plan the development of new computer processors.

In 1991, Mr Moore was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States.

– Moore’s Law and business

Moore’s Law essentially means faster and cheaper computing. It states that chip performance per dollar doubles every 18 months.

Mr Moore predicted that the number of transistors on a microchip (which is used in building everything from smartphones to computers) doubles every two years, yielding greater processing power and reduced price of tech products.

Put simply, in 18 months, a processor that is same speed as today’s models should be available for half today’s price.

While some dismissed Mr Moore’s argument, many companies for decades deployed this law as a tool of competitive advantage. They held onto this trick: the ability to make their products less expensive and more powerful periodically.

In March 2017, Intel’s executive vice president leading manufacturing, operations and sales, Stacy Smith, said Intel’s ability to advance Moore’s Law was the company’s core competitive advantage.

The company released a new chip in 2016, created at 10 nanometers, down from the 14 nanometers available before.

In 2003, Amazon started its “Search Inside the Book” feature that digitized images and text from thousands of books in its catalog, with a 20-terabyte database, 20 times as powerful as what obtained in 1995 when the company launched. This enjoyed a 7% sales increase over non-searchable books.

– Sustainable?

The question has always been asked whether using Moore’s Law as a tool of competitive advantage for business is sustainable.

Two principles in physics provide a pointer. First, the smaller and more powerful chips get, the more heat energy they generate. This means today’s most powerful chips need to be cooled and that comes at a cost.

Google and Facebook have expensive air-cooling systems and venting systems to prevent meltdown. So, this competitive advantage draws a lot of power and that costs a lot of money. Second, there is a limit to chips getting smaller.

Lately, Intel rivals such as Nvidia Corp have contended that Moore’s Law no longer holds as improvements in chip manufacturing have slowed down.