What is Moore's Law?

In 1965, Gordon Moore was preparing a speech and made a memorable observation. When he started to graph data about the growth in memory chip performance, he realized there was a striking trend. Each new chip contained roughly twice as much capacity as its predecessor, and each chip was released within 18-24 months of the previous chip. If this trend continued, he reasoned, computing power would rise exponentially over relatively brief periods of time.

Moore's observation, now known as Moore's Law, described a trend which has continued and is still remarkably accurate. It is the basis for many planners' performance forecasts. In 25 years, as Moore's Law predicted, the number of transistors on a chip has increased more than 2,300 times, from 2,300 on the 4004 in 1971 to 5.5 million on the Pentium® Pro processor.

Graph of Moore's Law

Machrone's Law

Rock's Law