The High Cost of Computers?

The world economic downturn seems to be stopping plans by chip manufacturers to move to the next stage of chip design. This development is likely to have considerable consequences for the defense world, because it may herald the end of Moore's Law. Formulated by computer industry executive Gordon E. Moore in 1965, Moore's Law predicted that the number of components the industry would be able to place on a computer chip would double every year (in 1975, he updated his prediction to once every two years), implying that the cost of a unit amount of computing power would halve during that same period. That is usually taken to mean that the power of a typical chip will double in that span. Some claim that the rate of advance is now actually much faster. Usually it is assumed that Moore's Law will continue until the computer industry hits a physical barrier; a typical prediction is that it has 30 years to run.

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