ABSTRACT
In 1965, Gordon Moore—then the director of research for Fairchild Semiconductor—published an observation and a prediction regarding semiconductor manufacturing that has come to be known as Moore’s Law. Roughly, Moore observed that the most profitable number of integrated circuit components that could be crammed onto a silicon chip (a “die”) had doubled about every year since 1959; his prediction was that this observation would continue to hold true for the next ten years. In fact, this ‘law’ has accurately described the pace of innovation in semiconductor manufacturing for almost a half century—far longer than Moore or anyone else expected.
