Understanding Moore’s Law: Four Decades of Innovation
Edited by David C. Brock
2006, Chemical Heritage Foundation
160 pp, illus, notes, index
Paper, 6 x 9 inches, ISBN 0-941901-41-6
$12.00
View | Download
The rise of semiconductor electronics, and the underlying manufacturing technology for them, is among the most important global developments of the past half-century. Integrated circuits—silicon chips—have transformed communication, transportation, commerce, military force, and culture. Clearly, insights into the dynamics that have brought us this silicon revolution are vital to our understanding of the world today, and our common future. This new offering from CHF places the silicon revolution in a broad context and charts Gordon Moore’s development of his eponymous law across its forty-year life.
Over the past four decades, Moore’s law has served as a remarkable guide to the dynamics of the silicon revolution. Born as an observation and medium-term prediction about the economic and technical trends at play in the youth of the semiconductor industry, it grew to become, at first, an industry expectation and, later, the organizing goal of a multibillion-dollar global industrial segment. With the proliferation of silicon chips into nearly every aspect of contemporary life, Moore’s law is increasingly looked to as a bellwether for the whole of technological development.
Note: Each link is a link to a PDF that will open in a new window. The full text is also available as a single 11 MB download here.