A Law of Continuing Returns

The laws of physics make such lightning-fast travel all but impossible. But those laws have also permitted remarkable advances in technology, at a pace first predicted 40 years ago Tuesday by a young engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor.

In the decades since Electronics magazine published Gordon Moore's article "Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits," Moore's Law has evolved from an obscure theoretical postulation to the very foundation of Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial ethos.

And although Moore's Law has proved strikingly accurate for nearly half a century, the engineers who made silicon one of the most important ingredients in modern life are asking themselves: "What comes next?"

Simply put, Moore's Law posits that the number of components on integrated circuits such as silicon computer processors will double every couple of years, while the cost per component declines at a commensurate rate.

It explains how computing gets cheaper even as it gets ever faster. By making transistors tinier and tinier, researchers have cut the distances that electricity must travel, boosting chip speeds.

"I wanted to get across the idea that integrated circuits were going to be a way to build things, and that things were going to get cheaper as they got more complex," Moore, now 76, who co-founded chip giant Intel Corp. in 1968, said last month in an interview.

The squeezing of progressively more components onto silicon chips has enabled technology to pervade virtually every aspect of daily life, affecting the way people communicate, work, learn and relax.

"Moore's Law is indelibly linked to the history of our industry and the economic benefits that it has provided over the years," chip expert Dan Hutcheson of semiconductor consultancy VLSI Research wrote in a recent article. "The integrated circuit developed rapidly, leading to Moore's observation that became known as a law -- and in turn, launched the information revolution."

Moore's maxim has weathered industry downturns, skepticism by experts and breathtaking technological advances. But it endures. Every 10 years or so, Moore himself predicts that his law has another 10 years or so before the technology on which it is based begins to hit its limits and the pace of advance slows.