Intel Says Moore's Law Not Dead

Intel insists it can keep innovating in ways that keep rates of progress based on Moore's Law a relevant assumption. Intel’s success or failure will have direct implications for the cost of many products requiring computing.  If other industries experienced innovation at the rate of Moore’s Law, car owners could drive a distance equivalent to traveling between the earth and the sun on a single gallon of gas, according to tacy Smith, Intel SVP.

Agriculture productivity would be so high we could feed the planet on a square kilometer of land, said Smith. As for the speed of travel, humans would be traveling at 300 times the speed of light.

So yes, Moore’s Law matters. But Intel is making some shifts in the way it measures progress, focusing less on the number of transistors and more on the cost of computing. Intel now will emphasize such matters as the manufacturing cost per transistor, which Intel expects to cut by about half with each new manufacturing process, which is in line with Moore's Law.

Moore's Law continues to face physical constraints, as the packing of more transistors into a finite space reaches physical limits, at least using silicon technology. So Intel now focuses more on output metrics, rather than input measures, such as transistor count. In fact, some might argue that Moore's Law is broken.

With the new measurements, Intel will be able to boast that its manufacturing improvements are surpassing Moore's Law. The company also said it would cut the manufacturing cost per transistor by half with each new manufacturing process, which is in line with Moore's Law.