The Death Of Moore's Law || Moore's Law Part 2

Premonition of Death 

In 2015, Moore predicted that the growth of transistors would gradually slow in the next decade or so and render Moore's law obsolete. This was based on the observation of the gradual tapering off of development in the field of silicon based transistors.

A Premature Death

However, Moore had grossly overestimated the lifetime of his law which, for all practical purposes, died a rather premature death towards the latter half of the 2010s.

The Autopsy 

The death of Moore's law was brought about by a chain of events that gradually rendered advancement in transistor architecture untenable and uneconomical.
Increase in the computational capacity of integrated circuits has mostly been fuelled by a decrease in the size of transistors.
However, towards the fag end of the previous decade, the size of transistors reached a scale of nanometers. At this miniscular size, quantum effects such as quantum tunneling become prominent. Leakage of electric current as minority current from the collector of a transistor is fuelled by the phenomenon of quantum tunneling. As the size of the transistor decreases, the current leakage increases due to a decrease in the barrier potential the electrons must overcome.
 The increase in the leakage current further leads to a heating effect which increases the overall temperature of the system and decreases the performance of the chip. To mitigate the heating effect of each transistor, either the voltage or the number of transistors per unit area must be reduced -  both of which lead to a reduction in the computational capabilities of the integrated circuit.
Also, as the number of transistors increases, so does the requirement for more powerful cooling systems. Economically, we have reached a stage where it is no longer suitable to reduce the size of transistors and increase their number density on operational chips.

Thus, both physical and economic constrictions have led to the death of Moore's law.

The Wake
However, the death of Moore's law does not signify the end of progress in the field of computation. It rather signals the onset of a period of exploration at the end of which we shall be introduced to the heir to the throne of computer architecture - the incumbent of which is the transistor.

The next article will cover the claimants in detail.


References

1. The End of Moore's Law || Interesting Engineering
2. EE Times