Moore's Law Wakes Up Again

Moore's Law, for all of you folks that think overclocking is sleeping late and driving to work faster, is the rule of thumb that computing power will double every eighteen months or so. It's seems to have been stuck a bit lately, and everyone was wondering where the next goose your chip needs -- to show you glistening beads of sweat on cheerleaders in future versions of Madden Football, instead of four pixels per nose--is going to come from. Well, laser beams running around inside your chip might do it: 

Researchers plan to announce on Monday that they have created a silicon-based chip that can produce laser beams. The advance will make it possible to use laser light rather than wires to send data between chips, removing the most significant bottleneck in computer design. As a result, chip makers may be able to put the high-speed data communications industry on the same curve of increased processing speed and diminishing costs - the phenomenon known as Moore's law - that has driven the computer industry for the last four decades.

The real story here might be how much cheaper this will make data distribution through fiber optic networks if it pans out. But of course sensible people are just wondering if we're going to be able to play Doom 4 without a Cray supercomputer. This might make it happen.

Read the whole thing here.

Tags:  law, Moore's Law, AG, AI, K