Michio Kaku on the Collapse of Moore’s Law

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Posted on: May 1, 2012 / Last Modified: May 1, 2012

Moore’s Law has been around since 1965 when Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore described it in a paper. Since that day, the law has been in full effect, and the number of transistors placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has roughly doubled every two years. It’s also a commonly held belief that chip performance doubles every 18 months.

But Moore’s Law won’t be true forever, and in the video below theoretical physicist Michio Kaku explains how it will collapse. And Kaku argues that the collapse isn’t going to happen in some distant future but within the next decade.

The problem is one of finding a replacement for silicon coupled with the exponential nature of Moore’s Law. Quite simply, computing power cannot go on doubling every two years indefinitely.

The other issue is we are about to reach the limits of silicon. According to Kaku, once we get done to 5nm processes for chip production, silicon is finished. Any smaller and processors will just overheat.

What’s beyond silicon? There have been a number of proposals: protein computers, DNA computers, optical computers, quantum computers, molecular computers. Dr. Michio Kaku says “if I were to put money on the table I would say that in the next ten years as Moore’s Law slows down, we will tweak it.”

So, what do you think?

Is Michio Kaku right or is he going to be just one among many who wrongly predicted the demise of Moore’s Law?!

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