Such a rapid rate of development is only possible because improvements in processing speed have experienced exponential rather than linear gains over the last sixty years. It is this quality, first observed in computing by Moore, that is powering the Third Disruption far more quickly than many thought possible. Its consequences reach far beyond video games.
While progress over the last half century has been dizzying, the parable of rice grains on the chessboard remains instructive. If such trends persist for another six decades, the results – like the pile of rice bigger than Everest – are almost beyond comprehension. If that single field of rice halfway up the board represents global real-time communication and millions of industrial robots, then what is the mountain?
Can Moore’s Law Endure?
The transformative power of Moore ’s Law, should it persist, is inarguable. The key question, then, is how much longer it can endure. In 2015 researchers at Intel foresaw it prevailing for at least another ten years, although by the standards of a trajectory more than five decades old, that hardly counts as optimistic. A year later William Holt, the company’s CEO, was less confident, claiming it might only carry on for another five years and, at best, would significantly slow down thereafter (although he believed progress elsewhere, in areas such as energy eficiency, were likely). That would seem a formidable challenge to more optimistic projections, and if Holt is right our present field of rice will only grow to five or six by the middle of this century. An immense improvement, but certainly not exponential.
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chaos under heaven