Transcending Moore's Law: Is This the Most Important Chart in the Technology Business?
Moore's Law, the observation that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit has doubled every two years, explains the exponential growth in computing power that enables all the innovation we web-heads love so much. Futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that the exponential growth of computing power extends beyond the history of the integrated circuit, though. Exponential growth in computing happened as a result of innovations prior to the circuit board and it will continue after the integrated circuit's dominance has been surpassed, Kurzweil believes.
Steve Jurvetson, one of the best-known technology investors in the world, has posted an updated version of Kurzweil's visualization of the history of exponential growth in computing. In his thought provoking discussion of the phenomenon, Jurvetson calls this "the most important chart in technology business."
"What Moore observed in the belly of the early IC [integrated circuit] industry was a derivative metric," Jurvetson writes, "a refracted signal, from the bigger trend, the trend that begs various philosophical questions and predicts mind-bending futures."
What will be the next big leap in computing technology? From a hardware perspective I won't even venture to guess, but it sure is exciting to think about what those technologies will enable. Many things we'd love to see done today remain too processor intensive, from advanced Augmented Reality implementations to broader real time services and machine learning. Ultimately, we can only make clumsy guesses about the killer apps of an exponentially more powerful computing platform - that's the point.
When calculations per second increase exponentially, fundamentally new things become possible. It's one of those fascinating quantitative changes that cross the threshold of creating qualitative change.
For every frontier explored there is baggage brought from home, of course. About this chart, Union Square Ventures associate Andrew Parker asks "how much does a newer medium pull from an older medium in terms of design paradigms?" (That makes us want to cry for the poor limping US Patent Office, now facing layoffs of all things!)
Mind bending is right. What does this chart, that Jurvetson calls the most important in the technology business, bring to your mind - innovation loving readers of ReadWriteWeb?
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What is really exciting to me is that there is another multiplier in here - the fact that as the price has gone down, more people are getting connected. So you've got this growth, *times* the "social graph network effects bridging digital divides" growth unleashed by social networks.
enabling human brainpower to work to our advantage aka crowdsourcing.. there is still lots of work to be done in that area.
When we finally succeed in harnessing that power, things will start really moving.. not only technology wise, but more importantly socially! It's all coming together. The coming years will be really exciting. Let's start cracking that code!
Networked wet-ware could well be the next stage of that chart!
Would be interesting to show Moore's segment in his original notebook paper sketch. It's available on intel.com.
I don't think the other segments were ever plotted out while they were happening. I wonder what they would have looked like?
Thanks Marshall for another very interesting post. Your earlier post re browser extensions to 'augment reality' is good too.
Want to hear of your thoughts, and those who should know, about networked wet-ware. What will happen to us full-time connected web heads when we get blue screen because Michael Jackson died, causing a denial of service crash?
Great post, great charts, great comments--especially the first two
Was just discussing this concept with friends yesterday. What happens when we can harness all the spare cycles in everyone's brains. Imagine a SETI@home type app that uses the spare computing power of your brain and provides really cool screensaver dreams while you sleep. Of course, we'll probably get a little bogged down by Norton Brain Security 2030.
Marshall, the kind of convergence you're talking about is exactly what we're about to delve into quite deeply for the summer at Singularity University.
What happens when you take 5-7 exponentially advancing technologies and bring together the world's best thought leaders and graduate students across these fields? Should be fun...
Cheers,
Salim
I think it's reasonable to say that we're looking to bioengineered computers for the next step in hardware. We're already doing so much development in that area, and I recall reading about a grown processor years ago.
Marshall asked, What will be the next big leap in computing technology?
The answer is Quantum Computing (QC) and all related disciplines to QC. QC is a hot topic of R&D today, from government agencies to the private sectors, such as IBM (for many years) and Microsoft (reported here to be exploring it) are doing so.
Sun Microsystem's former chief scientist Bill Joy, put it correctly in his thought provoking wired article in 2000 , when he stated : I have long realized that the big advances in information technology come not from the work of computer scientists, computer architects, or electrical engineers, but from that of physical scientists.
Bill Joy's comment was right on the mark. Physicists are the driving force behind this new revolution in IT both hardware & software. The design of transistors & ICs require knowledge of Quantum Mechanics and this is fact, but we (the general public) frequently call them engineers, in fact they should be called Physicists. I know this for a fact because I usually talk with a few Physicists who work in the private sectors and they usually being labeled as engineers. See, usually you see programmers or software developers being called engineer, whether being a PHP, HTML, JavaScript, they're all engineers. Three US Physicists shared the Physics Nobel Prize in 1956 for the invention of the silicon-based transistor, and this lead to the birth of Silicon (chip) Valley with semiconductor industries established.
It may be useful to use McLuhan's four laws of new media to think about this:
Every fundamental new technology has four effects ...
The 4 Laws of Media
What human trait or experience does the new medium ENHANCE?
What is the intended function of the new medium or technology?
What does it improve or make more efficient?
Does it extend part of the human body, or one or more of the senses?
Does it extend some aspect of the human mind (such as memory)?
Does it amplify some human capability or augment some form of human action?
Does it extend the individual, the group, or society?
What pre-existing technology, method, system, or medium does the new medium OBSOLESCE?
What older technology does the new medium replace?
What does it render unnecessary?
What procedures does it “short-circuit” or by-pass?
What happens to the old medium that is rendered “obsolescent”: does it disappear entirely, become an art object, or find a new niche?
What technology, method, system, or medium that was previously obsolesced or abandoned does the new medium RETRIEVE?
What archaic elements are made relevant again?
What previously marginalized or repressed ideas, practices, artifacts, or cultural aspects are brought forth and revived?
When fully utilized or pushed to its extreme, what will the new media or technology REVERSE into?
What effects will the new medium create that are OPPOSITE to what was originally intended?
What are the contradictions inherent in the new technology? What is the “ecological”/”environmental” impact of the medium on its contemporary media environment?
For readers who are new to the topic of Quantum Mechanics, you must watch the following youtube animation of the infamous double-slit-experiment just to get an idea of what this indeterminate revolutionary theory is. World renowned theoretical physicist late Physics Nobel Laureate Prof. Richard Feynman of CalTech (who himself was very impressed with Wolfram founder, scientist Dr. Stephen Wolfram when the young Wolfram was at CalTech) once quoted that if anyone can come up with a physical theory that explains the controversy of the double-split-experiment in a local manner (because quantum superposition is non-local, ie, material things can be here & there in different points of space at once which lead to the possibility that Falafulu Fisi is writing this post from his home in New Zealand and from California at the same time - I am at 2 places simultaneously), then that theory should supersede or make Quantum Mechanic obsolete.
Dr. Quantum - Double Slit Experiment (animation)
What is observed in the double-slit-experiment is fact (ie, undeniable), what is still debatable whether indeed the particle (electron) does indeed go thru the 2 slit holes at once. Quantum Mechanic (QM) says yes, where majority of Physicists agree with that interpretation, however there has never been any direct observation (ie, measured) and evidence that the particle (electron) does go thru the 2 slit holes at once. The conclusion is based on the QM theory, ie, the solutions of equations that QM produced, stated that there is an appreciable probability that the particle goes thru the 2 holes at once and this is why Physicists believe that in actuality, this is actually what happens (ie, the particle goes thru the 2 holes at once), however there is no direct experimental evidence only inference. This scenario is unprovable, because according to QM theory, if one attempts to measure which one of the 2 holes that the particle went thru, it means they only went thru one and not both holes, so there can never be any successful attempt to measure if indeed the particle goes thru the 2 holes when you're not looking (ie, no measurement), but when measurement is put in place tell if they go thru both, then one only ended up seeing that the particle only went thru one of the 2 holes but not both. Physicists have their faith in the equations.
This interpretation of QM which is what made quantum computing possible and it was late Prof. Richard Feynman who first recognized this and proposed the possibility Computing via quantum phenomena (ie, quantum computing) at a symposium at CalTech/MIT in the early 1980s. In classical computing or 1/0 bit of information is extended in quantum computing to qubit, where the notion of one or zero (1/0) disjunction disappears. One can say that the quantum bit (qubit) is both 1 and 0 at the same time where as in the classical sense the bit is only at one state 1 or 0 at a single point in time but not both 1 and 0 simultaneously. Qubit is a superposition of many states at once, similar to the double-slit-experiment's where the particle is at point A and point B simulataneously (ie, traversing thru holes A & B at once ).
There is a recent new theory that attempted to explain QM in a local manner because QM is a non-local theory (ie, non-causal & God-like phenomena) which is theoretically consistent with all the current observations of QM but avoids God-like physical explanation of being at 2 places at once. This new theory (TEW - theory of elementary waves) that a particle in the double-slit-experiment does indeed go thru one hole at all time, the problem lies in our theory and not our measurement apparatus.
It (TEW) suggests that the particle is guided by a pilot wave that originates from the detector (the back screen as in the double-slit-experiment) which impinges on the emitter (particle or electron source), and cause it to emit a particle which then the particle follows the path which was traversed by this wave (an elementary wave which is supposedly omnipotent in the universe, ie, it is everywhere). The particle went thru ONLY one hole (either hole A or hole B) which it continues thru and hit the point on the screen where the pilot wave (elementary wave) started from. The interference we see is caused by these pilot waves and the observed interference even the particles are shoot one at a time have got nothing to do with particles that go thru 2 holes at once, which has never been experimentally verified. If TEW is correct, it doesn't mean that quantum computing (QC) is impossible, it simply means that the design principles of QC have to be modified, since it is now not the superposition that attributed to QC phenomena, but it is now attributed to the pilot wave (which at the end does the same thing). TEW is only bad for mysticism where they have claimed all along that Quantum Mechanics had verified the existence of the paranormal/supernormal/supernatural which is completely bollocks. TEW completely throws any ties to paranormal out the window.
Anyway, I could explain a bit more but that is another topic of discussion.
Moore's law will continue on as technology in Photonics emerges in the coming years, as it overtakes semiconductor silicon-based technology, because they're approaching their limits set by Quantum Mechanics (QM). As more components are packed at close proximity in semiconductor based devices of today, then the laws of Quantum Mechanics start imposing restrictions of any pushing to pack more components, so it limits further miniaturization. This limitation is avoided via developing Photonic devices.
During the symposium for the opening of the Physic Department's Photonic Center at the University of Auckland , New Zealand in 2006 in which I attended. Prof Ben Eggleton presented a proto-type photonic chip (move your mouse over the chip diagram), which involve no semiconducting material at all, everything is wave-guides and lasers. The chip that was passed around the conference during his presentation, was about a square centimeter (width by height) in size. Prof. Eggleton mentioned that they (his research center) will be co-developing this new next generation chip over the next 5 years or so with Intel and other partners, so we're still years away from seeing these devices become commercially available.
A correction to my previous message about the link to Microsoft's exploring quantum computing, where the correct one is shown below:
Microsoft Research Explores Quantum Computer - Microsoft
Transcending Moore's Law: Is This the Most Important Chart in the Technology Business? http://tr.im/pTX2 [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/2348803858]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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July 16, 2009 9:37 AM