Itanium Rising: Breaking Through Moore's Second Law of Computing Power

Moore's First Law and Its Impact

Moore's Law is the prediction made by one of Intel's founders, Gordon Moore, that the number of transistors that engineers could place onto a microchip would double every 18 months. This in turn meant that CPU power would increase accordingly every year and a half. The graphic representation of this can be seen in Figure 2-1 below. This was a benefit to the computer scientist and other power hungry commercial users who always needed faster equipment. Also, this became a shorthand way for computer systems vendors to predict that they would be able to double performance every 18 months.

Figure 2-1. Graphic Representation of Moore's Law

To date, Moore's first law has remained unchanged, as technological advances ...