The 51-year-old computing principle is now butting heads with the realities of physics and economics.
In 1965 Gordon Moore, who would go on to co-found Intel, wrote a paper in which he described what has become known as “Moore’s law.” It stated that the number of transistors on a microprocessor will double roughly every two years, meaning, in theory, that every two years the processors inside our devices would get twice as fast and be able to do twice as much. For the better part of the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and into the first decade of the 21st century, Moore’s law proved to be correct—but only because it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, according to a recent article in the science journal Nature, which argues that the prophecy is about to come to an end.
