GPU maker NVIDIA declared it dead already, even Intel predicted its ultimate demise and now a futurologist is putting another nail in the coffin of Moore’s Law: Michio Kaku said that 10 years from now the aforementioned law will flat out, forcing the tech industry to find viable alternatives to the now-standard microchips made of silicon.
Kaku, an American theoretical physicist known for his work on the string theory and his role as a “science communicator”, recently addressed the issues that the microprocessors industry will face in the upcoming future: soon CPUs will not be able to double their performance every two years or so as predicted by the practical rule thought up by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore in 1965.
In fact, Kaku explained, Moore’s Law is already slowing down: Intel is now “tweaking” its silicon-based technology with tri-gate three-dimensional transistors (Ivy Bridge), but when the shrinking of technology nodes will come to five nanometers and beyond the laws of physics will do justice of the so-called “Moore’s Law”.
After that, Kaku suggested, there is only uncertainty: in what the scientist called the “post-silicon” era, the industry will probably tweak current technologies (optical chips, three-dimensional designs, extreme multi-core architectures) to further evolve microchips but there will not be a doubled performance per biennium anymore.
At the end of the Moore’s Law cycle, Kaku foresaw molecular (organic-based) chips and quantum computers as possible candidates to inherit the reign of silicon. In this latter case, however, humanity will have to wait until the late 21st century to see the issues of this still immature technology overcome.