<aside> 👉🏽 This is a draft. Do not publish. Please feel free to leave comments.
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Let's say that you are at a networking lunch - and you meet someone new people. You mention that you used to be an engineer but are now a writer. They mention that they work for a semiconductor company. “Neither conducts nor insulates,” you say, pretty happy that you still remember some high school physics.
They work for a chip design company, they clarify. You rack your brain for anything you might know about chips and blurt out: “Ah, Moore’s law.”
They nod, “Yeah, Moore’s law.” The conversation shifts to how the Apple M1 Pro resurrected Moore’s law.
Meanwhile, you excuse yourself to go get some “more” (buttermilk).
Later that day, you wonder, what is Moore’s law? And who was Moore? And why is the internet saying that it may not hold any further? After an hour of research, you get to bigger questions: what is a chip? And why can’t people have just one? Oh wait, that’s a different chip.
Hold on buddy, we got your back.
We’ve made a list of 25 things you need to know - in short paragraphs, with important terms marked in bold. Let’s dive in.
Gordon Moore co-founded Intel in 1968.
A few years before that, in 1965, he was working as the director of research and development (R&D) at Fairchild Semiconductor. In an article for Electronics magazine (April 1965), Moore predicted that the number of components on a single chip will double every year, which he later revisited to every two years.
<aside> 👉🏽 Moore’s law: Transistors per silicon chip will double every two years.
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Now, one might imagine that chips are like really slow Amoebas that are doubling themselves into two once in two years. But what Moore meant to say was engineers were making swift progress in their ability to print thinner transistors (and other components) and therefore the same size of silicon wafer would fit more components.
By the way, Moore was one of the original traitorous eight.