Moores Law

A central trend in hardware development is the exponential increase with time of the number of transistors in an integrated circuit. This observation, known as Moore s law, was first made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, who foimd that the number of transistors that minimized the cost per component in an 

Historical development of the transistor count for integrated circuits. The solid line depicts Moore s 1975 prediction that transistor counts would double every two years. Data were obtained from Intel s web site, http / / www.intel.com, and from Wikipedia, http //www.wildpedia.org. 

In 1965 Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel, made the observation that the number of transistors per area of an integrated circuit had doubled every year since the discovery of the transistor. This trend has been known as Moore s law and it has continued until the present, although the doubling time has slowed to 18 months. Experts in the field expect the trend to continue through the next two decades. 

With the use of epitaxial growth methods such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) or metal organic vapor deposition (MOCVD), it is possible to grow single crystalline ternary alloy systems such as AljrGai j As or quaternary systems such as Ga lhi xAsyPi y with controlled composition as well as to form heterostructures by growing one compound semiconductor epitaxially on top of another compound semiconductor. (Epitaxy means that the lattice periodicity is maintained across the growth interface.) 

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The mathematical form of the PEF is in almost every case a compromise between speed and accuracy. As computer power continually increases, ideally following Moore s Law, and the cost/performance ratio is getting better, one might think that there is no longer a need to sacrifice accuracy to save computational time. This is not really true, because in direct proportion to the CPU speed is the rise in the scientists interest in calculating larger and larger molecules (in fact, their interest always rises faster than the CPU speed). 

For 25 years, molecular dynamics simulations of proteins have provided detailed insights into the role of dynamics in biological activity and function [1-3]. The earliest simulations of proteins probed fast vibrational dynamics on a picosecond time scale. Fifteen years later, it proved possible to simulate protein dynamics on a nanosecond time scale. At present it is possible to simulate the dynamics of a solvated protein on the microsecond time scale [4]. These gains have been made through a combination of improved computer processing (Moore s law) and clever computational algorithms [5]. 

An attempt to forecast the further shrinkage of integrated circuits has been made by Gleason (2000). He starts out with some up-to-date statistics during the past 25 years, the number of transistors per unit area of silicon has increased by a factor of 250, and the density of circuits is now such that 20,000 cells (each with a transistor and capacitor) would fit within the cross-section of a human hair. This kind of relentless shrinkage of circuits, following an exponential time law, is known as Moore s law (Moore was one of the early captains of this industry). The question is whether the operation of Moore s Law will continue for some years yet Gleason says that attempts to forecast an end to the validity of Moore s Law have failed dismally it has continued to hold well beyond expectations . The problems at... 

For the past 30 years, the semiconductor industry has followed Moore s law, which states that transistor performance and density double every 3 years (1). Although not truly a law, Gordon Moore s statement has yet to be violated. But now it seems to be in serious danger. Fundamental thermodjmamic limits are being reached in critical areas, and unless new. 

These fundamental issues have not previously limited the scaling of transistors and represent a considerable challenge for the semiconductor industiy. There are currently no known solutions to these problems. To continue the performance trends of the past 20 years and maintain Moore s law of improvement will be the most difficult challenge the semiconductor industry has ever faced. 

Time scales for various motions within biopolymers (upper) and nonbiological polymers (lower). The year scale at the bottom shows estimates of when each such process might be accessible to brute force molecular simulation on supercomputers, assuming that parallel processing capability on supercomputers increases by about a factor of 1,000 every 10 years (i.e., one order of magnitude more than Moore s law) and neglecting new approaches or breakthroughs. Reprinted with permission from H.S. Chan and K. A. Dill. Physics Today, 46, 2, 24, (1993). 

The push to make ever smaller and denser arrays of electronic devices may be inspired by technological feasibility, but it is driven by commercial considerations and by Moore s empirical law [13] ever since the 1960s, the minimum distance or design rule (DR) between components in integrated circuits has halved every... 

Moore s Law lever Questionable economics for large areas... 

It has been mentioned that perhaps the greatest limitation to the precision of free energy calculations to date has been the often-inadequate sampling of a representative set of configurations of the system. Increases in computer power of course increase the radius of convergence of such calculations. Such increases come not only from the Moore s Law improvements in hardware, but also from algorithmic... 

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