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Technology

Gordon Moore On Moore's Law 136

Posted by timothy from the village-elders dept.
missingmatterboy writes: "Technology Review has a wide-ranging interview with Gordon Moore, wherein he discusses the future of computers, his famous 'Moore's Law,' the need for better education, the environment, and finally, why he, along with Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, picked up the tab for SETI. Cool guy." Who better to ask about the future?
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Gordon Moore On Moore's Law More

Gordon Moore On Moore's Law

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  • Re:Who better to ask about the future? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The magic 8-ball has a better grip on the future than Jon Katz.

  • Re:education (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Largely unknown to the public, the whole notion of education has been radically transformed over the years, so that it no longer means conveying the accumulated knowledge and understanding of a civilization, but shaping children's psyches and indoctrinating their minds with politically correct ideologies. Not only are there individual education gurus and ideological movements which promote the intrusion of such activities into the schools, the educators themselves are apostles of this new mission and the nationwide teachers' union -- the National Education Association -- is pushing the same agenda." --Thomas Sowell

  • Moore's new law... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Therefore probability of detection is p=p0*(r/N).

    Ah, the lesser known p0rn's law.

  • Re:The question they should have asked (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't see that much difference in the stock performance of Intel and AMD. Looks like they've followed each other fairly closely in the last year, although AMD has pulled ahead in the last couple of months:

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=c&c=intc&k=c1&t=1y&s= amd&a=v&p=s&l=on&z=m&q=l [yahoo.com]

  • Re:Moore's Law (or why Intel is losing to AMD late (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @02:11PM (#252604)
    I remember reading last year that when AMD was beating the pants off of them with the 1G Athlon, Intel was still revved for producing P3-600's, more in line with Moore's law.

    Selective memory, perhaps? AMD announced the 1GHz Athlon mere hours before Intel announced the Penium III 1GHz. It's a shame that such a lame bunch of partisan "misrememberance" is rated so highly.

  • Re:Predicting the future (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @02:24PM (#252605)
    Linux user since early January 1992.

    My cock is bigger than your cock.

  • Predicting the future (Score:4)

    by mce ( 509 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @02:05PM (#252606) Homepage Journal
    Who better to ask about the future?

    With all due respect for one of the true giants of the semiconductor and IT industries, but I don't think he has to be the best man to ask about the future. Not because he says so himself (for those who didn't read the article: he does), but because he's been involved in it for so long already.

    In general, the fate of all experts (especially in a world moving as fast as ours does nowadays) is that, with aging, they inevitably get to a point where they don't see the changes coming anymore. They end up relying more and more on extrapolations of their own (sometimes vast, but still very limited) knowledge and experience. At some point these extrapolations break down completely. IMHO, it's a rare person who understands this to be applicable to himself or herself in time. Those who do, stop making predictions years into the future anyway.

    --

  • Well it has a great deal to do with the chance of finding intelligent life on THIS planet.
  • The converse of Moore's law is that a constant amount of computing power gets drastically cheaper with time.

    But it doesn't. The cheapest laptops have been around $1000 forever now. When can I buy one for $500?

    --

  • heh. Both wrong. :)

    Bill Watterson, in Calvin & Hobbes...

  • This is being accepted by a growing number of SETI researchers, who believe (somewhat controversially) that humanity is the most advanced form of life in our own galaxy, at least.

    If those researchers would take the time to look around them, they would probably start to question whether humanity is the most advanced form of life even on our own planet.

  • Pardon my disrespect, but Moore's law
    seems to be more of a tool than anything
    else these days... I think that perhaps we're
    more capable of a year. Then again, what
    would I know, I'm just a frustrated consumer.
    You guys remember how long ago the P3 1Ghz came
    out?

  • Re:2 Years or 18 months (Score:5)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @01:49PM (#252612) Homepage Journal

    This article says that the Moore's Law says the number of transistors will double every two years. I always heard it was every 18 months.

    That was metric years.
  • [...]then take the chances that that intelligent life would live long enough to develop radio[...]

    I once read an article (or was it a chapter of a book? Can't remember now) discussing the infamous "Drake Equation" (regarding the probability of detecting intelligent life via SETI).

    The author had pointed out that the variable intended to represent how long a form of intelligent life existed before dying off really meant "how long a form of intelligent life broadcasts detectably in the radio spectrum", as far as SETI is concerned.

    The author then speculated that strong, readily detectable radio signals from Earth will have been going roughly 100 years before cable, fiberoptics, and other "non-broadcast" means of communication start supplanting them.

    He then plugged THAT number into the Drake Equation and got...1.
    "That must be us." the author quipped...

    Not that I have a problem with SETI or anything, but I found the argument very interesting...


    ---
  • Actually, clock speed has a lot to do with Moore's low. Moore's law is about increased transister density. Increased transister density translates directly to higher clock rates.

  • Self Fulfilling? (Score:4)

    by HardCase ( 14757 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @10:13PM (#252615)
    I think that Moore's "Law" is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. For 30 years or so, it's been a pretty reasonable estimate of the performance of the industry, but it's exponential in nature, so that means that at some point, the number of transistors on a device is just going to become too big. And that point is within a few years.

    The .13 micron processes that are state of the art right now are actually pretty big compared to what would be required in a few years, at least by Moore's Law. The problem is that technologies are lagging behind the "Law". A prime example is in lithography. Commercially practical sub-.1 micron lithography doesn't exist. Extreme UV hopes to drive device sizes down to as low as .04 microns, but it's still very experimental, even in its 4th year of development.

    Not to belittle Gordon Moore and his "Law", but I think that it's about to give out. Of course, what we call Moore's Law was really nothing more than an off the cuff remark by an "important person", so by following it, the semiconductor industry has validated it.

    Anyway, I don't think that it matters whether or not the industry follows it...after all, what we're really after is faster, better devices. And if it's possible to get there without following Moore's Law, then what's the difference? I think that's where we're headed.

    -h-

  • But perhaps the earlier generations of stars had planets that were so metal poor that no electrical science was possible? (Well, at least only one that involved ionic conduction.)

    Or perhaps the small terrestrial planets couldn't form without the dense metalic cores?

    Or perhaps MacroLife isn't interested in primitive planets. What would we have that they would want? (We may find ancient mines on the moons of Saturn or Neptune.)

    Or perhaps the 2001 scenario isn't that far off. But we just don't know that the signal's been sent. (At slower than light, it takes awhile to respond. And it's an old civil service, that doesn't have us anywhere near the top of it's most important things to do today.)

    Or ...

    It is a mystery, but the plausible answers are so numerous that I object to it being called a paradox.

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • Looks like they've followed each other fairly closely in the last year, although AMD has pulled ahead in the last couple of months:

    Yes, that would be the difference. The little underdog competitor, in shaky economic times, is exploiting the weaknesses in the overlord.

    --
    Poliglut [poliglut.com]

  • The question they should have asked (Score:4)

    by rw2 ( 17419 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @01:44PM (#252618) Homepage
    Why is it that Intel's stock price is so closely tracking the inverse Moore's law lately? :-)

    Thank god I own AMD...

    --
    Poliglut [poliglut.com]

  • I wish there was another way, perhaps distance learning.
    Libraries.
  • The funny thing is that really he's none of those things (nor do I support Bush nessicarily, I voted for Browne unlike all the posers here who claim to be libertarian). Ask non-tech friends who Moore is to find out just how famous he is.

    In addition to the other fine reasons listed, you might also consider he was on an environmrntal advisory panel for Bush, and of course he plans to start a foundation helping the environment. I'm sorry if I was mistaken in assuming the original poster is on more important advisory panels and had more environmental foundations of their own than did Moore.

    Frankly though, I thought that the "because he's smart" answer was about right and way more insightful than anything else I can offer.

  • ...then ask that question aloud once more.

    Perhaps they are interested more in the quality of comments posted than letting any yahoo blather about anything they like. They are more into technical commentary than freedom of expression, and there is a place for that at times.

    If you don't like it, start a "TRComments.org" site yourself and welcome all TR rejects to your site.

  • How odd (Score:4)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @03:04PM (#252622)
    Yes, how odd. Someone who probably knows an order of mangnitude more about the Kyoto treaty than you claiming that Bush is on the pragmatic end of protecting the environment and probbably will be OK, while you on the other had are pretty sure Bush would be willing to nuke all national parks from orbit, if only he had the nukes to spare.

    I wonder who has the viewpoint that people should pay "moore" attention to? Happily for you around here it's sure not Moore!

  • What we don't know (Score:4)

    by labradore ( 26729 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2001 @12:50AM (#252623)

    I think that we're pretty low on the curve of being able to find stuff in general, let alone inteligent life. I for one loose my keys and my wallet almost every day for at period of about five minutes and then there's my cell phone for which I sometimes conduct near-exhaustive searches of my domain only to find that it is in my pocket. I'm not the brightest but I know that there are a shitload of people dumber than me (e.g. Clinton/Gore supporters and the 70-odd percent of the population that believes in creationism instead of darwinsim). Granted some of the brightest minds on the planet are doing the searching but the fact that they rely on us--the ignorant masses--for their survival shows pretty clearly that they're no even near optimal vs. our actual capacity to conduct the search.

    If the life is truely intelligent then it is avioding us because lord knows we're not too friendly. If you are an inteligent species outside of the planet earth and less powerful than us we'll probably conquer you and if you're more powerful then we'll do whatever we can to become more powerful so that we may later conquer you. Why do I think so? Well, that's pretty much been our modus operandus for all of recorded history.

    Then there's the issue of what we can reliably detect. We do know for certian that every one of our ideas about physics basically only works in the domain we can easily observe and even sometimes in our observable domain we don't have good ways to explain what the hell is going on. Add the problem that we're pretty sure that most of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy that we can't even detect yet and you get the idea that as our gaze wonders past the limits of our biosphere our quality of perception decreases (i'm guessing!) exponentially.

    There's some major drawbacks to our existance that I think will stunt our ability to overcome our myopia. One is the fact that we're trapped in linear time and we can only traverse our time in a single direction at a fixed rate. Also we live in only 3 physical dimentions. While this 3D existance seems pretty advanced to us (ask SGI or Nvidia) there's plenty of scientists out there much smarter than I am who are embarassed to try to even explain how we're missing out on the action in the higher echelons of dimentionality (why?--even the small portion of us who even accept the idea that there are more dimentions tend to forget about it pretty easily which is illustrated by the death-rate for passengers of motor-vehicles.)

    Do I think we should give up because we won't find anything anyhow? Hell no! We aught to pour all our money and resources into searching, colonizing and exploring outer space. We've got nuclear weapons, acid rain, rising sea levels and major league baseball. That is proof enough for me that this planet is fucked and it really is time to move on. I, for one, have a lot of new and exciting ideas for how we can screw up other habitats and no one is going to let me try that stuff around here. I want to move on.

    If you haven't noticed the USA is the most powerful and free country in the world because it was created by people who habitually run away from civilization because they would rather try to survive alone in an (relatively) unknown wilderness than live with the schmuks they grew up with. Did I mention that a lot of the time the wilderness to which they ran posed significant threats of death, dismemberment or even boredom. Well guess what? There's no more wilderness! We filled it with schmuks! The implication here is that we're going to have either learn to live with eachother or devolve into a society similar to the europeans and probably become, like them, a bunch of socialist wimps with traditions and culture and all that other garbage. We need space! It's our final frontier!

    I will give everything I own and hold dear to anyone who can get me off this rock to someplace where I can be away from the rest of these jerks--even if there is significant danger of boredom! Long live NASA. Long live SETI (but not too long because it goddamned better start working soon or i'm going to have to detonate a nuclear device). Cordially, Rob

  • It's the ship date, stupid (Score:3)

    by marxmarv ( 30295 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @03:41PM (#252624) Homepage
    AMD announced the 1GHz Athlon mere hours before Intel announced the Penium III 1GHz.
    AMD 1GHz parts were available to consumers and OEM's well ahead of the Intel part. You could hold your very own AMD 1GHz processor in your hand some time before you could get the Intel part. Of course, if they were powered, you'd probably be able to hold on to the AMD part for a few seconds longer.

    -jhp

  • [Moderators: This is not a Troll; it is a correction of a significant factual error (whether intentional or not) by the previous poster.]

    False. The Drake equation says the number of communicable civilizations in the galaxy is directly proportional to the amount of time we look.

    Take the equation:

    N = R * f(p) * n(e) * f(l) * f(i) * f(c) * L
    L is the length of time that we search. Anyone with a background up through Pre-Algebra will realize that, since all the factors are multiplied together, if any one of the other factors is equal to zero, there can still be zero communicable civilizations no matter how long we look.

    Furthermore, Drake did not specify a unit for the measurement of time -- and well he shouldn't, because the Drake equation isn't intended to evaluate out to an absolute answer (such as the previous posters' claim of one per year), but rather to serve as a general guideline showing the proportionality of all of these elements.

    I'm not sure what point the parent post to this was trying to make nor how it got moderated up, but I do know that it is a completely misinterpretation of the Drake equation.

  • Faster for some problems. My understanding is that quantum computers are not Turing-equivalent, and that their stengths complement conventional computers well, but cannot replace them. Their destiny seems to be as co-processors for more general machines, with all the autonomy we've come to expect from an x87 FP unit.
  • How about because he probably understands that the Senate killed Kyoto before Bush got anywhere near it? Bush couldn't ratify the treaty if he wanted to.
  • The converse of Moore's law is that a constant amount of computing power gets drastically cheaper with time.
    But it doesn't. The cheapest laptops have been around $1000 forever now. When can I buy one for $500?
    1. The amount of laptop computing power available for $1000 has been increasing.
    2. I couldn't get down to $500, but here's one for $779 [computers4sure.com].
  • I wish people would stop using the phrase 'Moore's Law'. How bout 'Moore's Trend' or 'Moorse's Estimation' I dont care. Its not a law a law is something that would continue to exist with out us. Particles would still obey the laws the govern them without us watching or defining the laws. 'Moore's Law' would mean nothing if we stop make new transitor tech or discover a drastic new way of doing it that allowed us to go from 1 billion today to 10 billion tommorrow. Sure we would be breaking 'Moore's Law' but really just beating his prediction. I think is prediction his pretty cool seeing how it is fairly close, but you do disservice to laws of the universe that cannot be broken. If a law can be broken, its not a law its an invalid theory.
  • The biggest and most depressing limiting factor is the lifetime of a technologically advanced civilization. One might postulate that this could be as short as 20 years, given the number of times the human race has almost blown itself up.

    So, it's not a matter of an extraterrestrial signal reaching Earth at all, it's a matter of it reaching Earth while we are listening. If clear radio signals had reached the Earth 1000 years ago, we would never had known. If that civilization is now extinct, we will never know.

    Given the age of the universe, the time that we have been listening for radio signals is very small.
  • Actually, that resembles my favorite theory -- technological civilizations capable of interstellar travel abandon planets because when you have the technology to build generation ships it's more efficient to just extract what you need from a few asteroids and move on. (Also, if the aliens tend to continue established habits, which would seem to make sense in evolutionary terms as a means of preserving adaptive behaviors, they would not be interested in re-adapting to planets once they had adapted to generation ships.)
    /.
  • I've heard a couple variations. IIRC -- and it's been a while, so corrections or updates would be nice:
    • on the aggregate, hardware doubles in speed every 18 months
    • memory capacity doubles every 12 months
    • networking speed doubles every 24 months
    • general prices tend to fall by half every 18 months

    I'm just parroting half-remembered info here. Knowing the readership around here, someone more authoritative or ambitious than me might be able to refine or refute these numbers, but I seem to remember that this was about the pace things moved at.

  • Just FYI, your conclusion was for a separate postulate than your intro stated. You claimed to be rebuking the notion of extraterrestrial intelligence and then went on to show that there was LIKELY not any extraterrestrian intelligence IN OUT GALAXY. These are two completely separate notions.

    Also, just cause we can't detect something doesn't mean it isn't there. If we are looking for life in a galaxy 100 million light years away, there is no way to know whether life exists there or not. We can only know that no life existed there 100 million years ago, since it takes that long for info about that planet to get to us.

    Either way, we haven't proved it does exist, but there is NEVER any way to prove the converse of this.

    ie. You could prove God exists, if he would step down here, wave hi to everyone, work some incredible god-like voodoo magic, and then disappear. That'd be proof that he exists. However, there is NO way to prove that he doesn't exist. Anyway, i degress. I'm done.

    Justin Dubs
  • Very good point. Thank you. I am an atheist, but I will procede anyway.

    I agree that my analogy was invalid. It was merely an example to demonstrate that proving "X can't happen" or "X doesn't exist", can't be done, which I hope we both agree to be true, regardless of my flawed logic.

    It could be viewed that the "theoretical model" is yours (and mine), the model that this magical universe of matter just happened to always exist, so that that matter could give rises to life via the big bang scenario. There is, of course, no evidence of where this matter came from as it was, naturally, all lost in the big bang.

    The only way I can find around this argument is that of the Many Universe theory of Quantum Mechanics which says that maybe every possible universe exists at the same time and time is merely the felt effect of moving from one universe to another.

    Of course, this theory, as with most of Quantum Theory, just doesn't sit well with me. :-). Oh well. It's fun to think about regardless.

    Thanks for pointing out my erring analogy though.

    Justin Dubs
  • The "original" PIII was designed to run (and only ever did run) up to ~600 MHz. The CuMine was a die-shrink (I believe) and migrated the cache on-chip. Anyway, a die shrink increases the transistor density, though it doesn't increase the number of transistors on a chip. Obviously the on-chip cache increases the number of transistors quite a bit, though memory usually has a very high transistor density compared to a CPU because of the high regularity in layout.

    The CuMine also runs at a lower voltage, and therefore lower power.

    These factors combine to allow the CuMine to run at speeds higher than the 600 MHz design speed of the original PIII, which was a core revision on the PII that I believe used the same process as the 100 MHz FSB PII's (ie, the 350, 400, and 450 MHz models).

    How this factors in to whether intel was trying to track Moore's law rather than make the fastest processors they could, I am not really in a position to comment. I haven't really paid attention to this much recently.
  • I know this was a joke, but I kind of agree with it. There are some things you can learn from books, and there are others you need to be taught. Unfortunately, our education system is moving rapidly towards teaching mostly things that can be learned from books.

    It amazes me that so many people getting a CS degree take "database classes" where they learn not the theory of relational logic, nor algorithms for implementing databases, but instead SQL, the Dummy's guide to normalization (if they are lucky), and how to use JDBC to make DB backed web services.

    These types of things are important, but they are all things that someone properly educated can learn from a book. What the educational system needs to do is give people a really excellent background in math, the sciences, and design theory or whatever is approrpriate in a given field. Specific applications and implementations should be viewed as test-beds to understand the abstract design concepts that underly the application.

    A while ago people were making disturbing claims like "an engineering degree becomes obsolete in 5 years". Bullshit. A good engineering education should last a lifetime. Not only does a theoetical/abstract education resist obsolecense, it makes it easier for someone to change fields, or work on interdiciplinary areas of study. It gives you the background needed to learn whatever you need on your own.

    Part of the problem is that universities, particularly state univiersities whose funding is dependent on the number of students enrolled go too far (IMO) torwards "treating the student as a customer." Students bitch and moan about how they don't care about calculus or physics, they want to get on to the interesting/practical stuff. And so the schools let them. Even if they don't most of it is ignored or immediately forgotten.

    I could go on about what is wrong with our education system, going all the way back to kindergarden, but I have work to do...

  • Living in 3 dimensions (Score:3)

    by LinuxParanoid ( 64467 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2001 @11:32AM (#252637) Homepage Journal
    there's plenty of scientists out there much smarter than I am who are embarassed to try to even explain how we're missing out on the action in the higher echelons of dimentionality...

    Along these lines, you might want to check out a scientist bold enough to consider the non-3+1-dimension alternatives and attempt to explain why they wouldn't 'work' for universes containing observers. [upenn.edu] I wouldn't consider it proof, but I found it to be a cool provocative paper explaining perhaps why we have 3 spacial and 1 temporal dimension. --LP

  • If there's any factual errors, I can assure you that it was purely unintentional. I just took the opportunity to respond to the parent with something I remembered reading about when seti@home started which states:

    "Multiplying all the numbers gives us N = L. In other words, the number of intelligent communicating civilizations in the galaxy equals the number of years such a civilization lasts!"
    - http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/about_seti/abou t_seti_4.html

    Of course when you choose the values that the seti@home team chose, you are going to come up with N=L. I apologise if I have misrepresented the equation. I must have "tuned out", even though the article says I shouldn't.

    However the seti@home team are not likely to put up an article with the conclusion that the chances of finding life is zero. Not exactly in their best interest, is it?
    --
  • According to the Drake equation, the number of communicable civilisations in the galaxy increases by one per year of our looking.

    Explanation here [berkeley.edu]
    --
  • The federal government clearly can't give all of its support to Caltech and MIT. But I lean toward making the best even better. We don't want to build the infrastructure necessary to give away $100 million in $20,000 grants. We would be much more likely to look at the needs of an entire school, rather than trying to do individual projects.

    I have no problem with them giving all of their support to Caltech and MIT. Split it proportional to the size of the school, MIT will get $80 million, us over here at Caltech will get $20 million, I say we just distribute it evenly among the student body. There's only about 1,000 of us, so everyone will get about 20,000 :-).

    Works for me.

    ~Moller
  • Jon Katz, obviously...

    --
  • While this is true, I suspect the P3 1ghz announcement came to be in the following senario...

    (Fade into Intel's Marketing Department)

    Marketing Drone 1: Holy crap! AMD is set to announce their gigahertz Athlon processor. We MUST announce our own.
    Marketing Drone 2: I'll call down to the engineers and see what we've got to match AMD.

    (on phone)

    Engineer: What?!?! We've just started making 600mhz chips. You're f-ing out of your mind!
    Marketing Drone 2: But we must keep up with AMD! Can you build gigahertz processors?
    Engineer: I'd estimate that about 0.5% of our current chip yield *could* make 1 gigahertz.
    Marketing Drone 2: Great! I'm writing the press release right now. Get the bunny people up here!

    Meanwhile back at the ranch...

    Why do I think this is true? The P3 1ghz chip was very unstable compared to their other chips. They needed to write new BIOS code that disabled most of the preformance enhancing features just to get the chip to run. No, this wasn't misrepresentation, just the cold hard facts.
  • It doesn't work like that. SETI software has followed the same path as other software. It has grown.
    There was an upgrade a few months back. We had to run it or the system would refuse to accept our results. The time taken per unit has increased by over 60%.
    Your Office2000 bloatare goes at the same speed as WP51 on your old '386 doesn't it...

  • Moore on Technical education (Score:4)

    by hooded1 ( 89250 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @01:59PM (#252644) Homepage
    In this interview Moore mention that the chief reason that more people are not entering into the technical field is that kids are not really properly introduced to it in thier pre-college years. I fully agree with this belief, but i also think it is due to some other factors. Although a nerd's status in society has greatly improved since the eighties, there still exists a stereotype that nerds(hackers, engineers...) are socially inept and romantically unatractive. This belief is instilled in most children, forever deterrering them from a deep interest in computers. To some degree of course this stereotype is true, but then again most people who have highly developed social skills and popular personalities are the ones who tend to avoid the technical fields.
  • Intel "released" their 1GHz P3 in a display of the best (worst?) examples of vaporware that I can think of offhand. Even now, the production of 1GHz P3s are not as they should be.

    -rt-
  • Maybe you forget that there isn't a difference in the number of transistors in P3 600's and P3 1000's. Clock speed has nothing to do with Moores "Law".

    This is of course true, and I admit that I am not an expert in this field. But what I do know is that the P3 was (is?) not properly designed to run at 1000MHz, instead it's upper limit was designed to be approx. 600-800MHz. I have been led to believe that this has something to do with the transistors, but I could be wrong. Apologies if so.

    -rt-
  • Can you elaborate in more detail on what you mean?

    What I mean is: the P3 has clearly capped out as is, and Intel is not going to push it any further than it has already done (consider that they are shipping the P4 before it's fully ready for prime-time, which should be in a few months when the .13 micron process is ready).

    (I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious to see which website you'll cut and paste from to explain something you clearly have no clue about beyond quoting a bullet point or two)

    Asshole. I've been following the AMD vs. Intel struggles for 3 years as a consumer, investor, and enthusiast. FYI, if I were to cut-n-past, it would likely be from The Register or from Tom's Hardware. I'll let you look up articles yourself... And I put my money where my mouth is: following the news I bought AMD options heavy and am up over 200% this year so far, so I am not just some uninformed yahoo. I admit, and have admitted in the post you replied to, that I am not an expert in the field... but that gives you no right to say that I "clearly have no clue" simply because you insinuate that you have a clue without demonstrating it.

    yerricde, who replied to you, explained it nicely so I won't bother again, since others understand it better that I. What I do "have a clue" about, is that Intel was caught with their pants down because they figured that Moore's Law would be predictable and they geared the company, from R&D to Fabrication, around that flawed principle.

    apologies, I was drinking and watching The Sopranos... that's why this reads as a rant more than I mean it.

    -rt-
  • Intel became brainwashed into thinking that Moore's Law was an actual law, instead of a generally observed trend over the past several years. Yes, it has been quite a sustained trend, but still... not a Law in the sense of a proper Law.

    Intel's problem was that they built their company around this "Law" and were surprised when little AMD didn't seem to care that they were going ahead of Moore's schedule! And Intel had so many plants around the world that it is taking them until now to upgrade them to the point where they should have been a long time ago to maintain technological leadership.

    I remember reading last year that when AMD was beating the pants off of them with the 1G Athlon, Intel was still revved for producing P3-600's, more in line with Moore's law.

    -rt-

  • Moore's Law and SETI@home (Score:4)

    by eheien ( 94444 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @03:12PM (#252649)
    One interesting application of Moore's Law is to distributed computers like SETI@home. One of the major problems with SETI work is that it requires a supercomputer to analyze all the radio signal data coming in. By the time that the computer has been constructed and running for a few months, however, it's already obsolete.

    But when the system is constructed with thousands of individual PCs, which get upgraded anyway every few years, the entire computer gets a speed boost without having to be completely redesigned and rebuilt. I'd be curious to see how well the speed increase of SETI@home has matched Moore's Law over the two years since its conception, I bet it is pretty close.

  • Tell that to the people who bought AMD at $48.
  • Intel actually _shipped_ 1 GHz parts before AMD did. AMD announced first, and shipped in quantity first, but Intel _shipped_ first. Of course quibbling over something that was two days apart is moot. It was AMD's press release at the time which compared the first GHz processor release to the first transatlantic flight. Right, Jerry, whatever you say.
  • I'm not the brightest but I know that there are a shitload of people dumber than me (e.g. Clinton/Gore supporters and the 70-odd percent of the population that believes in creationism instead of darwinsim).

    Interesting statement....considering that most creationists in this country are "God-fearing Christians" who tend to vote heavily Republican.
    "I have as much authority as the pope.
    I just don't have as many people who believe it."

  • He's still worth $4.99995 BILLION more than me.
    In my books, that's not equal.
  • Yeah screw the whole educational system of schools and colleges. If there's a book on the subject it shouldn't be taught. Ever. Sure you might not have any equipment, but give me a book on rocket design and I'll build a VTVL in two weeks.
  • We all know he just wants the SETI freaks buying more processors.

    Jeremy

  • Maybe their prime directive doesn't allow them to interact with us yet.

    SETI@home isn't looking for communication.

    oR MAYBE I've been watching too much of Star trek

    Try Star Wars, as in SDI and Son of SDI. SETI is looking for signals with strong carriers such as military radar.

  • the P3 was (is?) not properly designed to run at 1000MHz, instead it's upper limit was designed to be approx. 600-800MHz. I have been led to believe that this has something to do with the transistors

    Explanation: As the CPU fabrication[0] process shrinks, transistors and other components become smaller ergo have less capacitance ergo run faster. Another explanation: Between the initial design of the P6 core and its use in later PIII processors, it was optimized to have a shorter critical path ergo a shorter cycle time.

    [0] Fabrication in AMD's case refers to manufacturing. In Intel's case, it refers to falsehoods such as "P4 is faster than its largest competitor (i.e. Athlon)."

  • The cheapest laptops have been around $1000 forever now. When can I buy one for $500?

    • Now. Go to eBay [ebay.com] or Half.com [half.com] and search for one.
    • Nowadays, the major expensive (power and $$$) components of a laptop include the backlit color TFT display and the drives (and perhaps the RAM), not the CPU.
    • The low end stagnates because of lack of applications for things that would otherwise trickle down from the high end. What do you need 1 GHz for (other than FPS playing or video editing, neither of which is reasonable in a mobile setting)?
    • Computer != PC. Palm and CE devices are computers too; they just don't have rotating storage or a full-size keyboard. DVD players and several other devices contain contain DSPs.

  • Read the replies scored 0 then ask that question aloud once more

    You can't read at threshold=0 if Slashdot is in Overload mode and is serving only static pages at threshold=1. Any attempt to change /article.pl's threshold or to get /comments.pl at all redirects you to the homepage.

  • Kyoto was not a good treaty.

  • I have unable to find a way around the following conclusion: I think that one of the fundamental principles that has allowed the human species to become dominant on Earth is their competitive nature. I think it's not a stretch to say that within the confines of the theory of evolution, a species MUST have a competitive nature to become dominant, and thereafter (thereby?) intellegent. Independently, as an intellegent species progresses, the difficulty with which an group of people of given size can destroy the entire population decreases. (At first only one country has nukes, then more countries, then large terrorist groups... etc.) Eventually a very small group of people (one person?) has the power to do so. Refer again to the fact that any such intellegent species must be competitive in nature, and you might say that after a certain level of technological advancement, it's increasingly likely, and ultimately inevitable that the species will destroy itself. This is not necessarily applicable to only nuclear weapons and the like. Indeed, destructive effects of technology (greenhouse?) might not even NEED a competitive impetus to set them off. If this is a fundamental law of intellegent species, they could be quickly flurishing to the electronic age or just past, and then flashing out... all over the universe. This explains why well reasoned arguments call for intellegent life elsewhere, but it's not to be found (by us). How can we avoid it? - increase the difficulty for destructive technology to destroy all of us (move to more planets, etc.)? - social constraints against allowing small groups to control such technology (I think we know better, eh?) - advance technologies? - - - I don't think any of these is really a good answer, but would like to find one, because I don't like the outcome!
  • I think that the image of "us nerds" as being, well, somewhat weird has a footing in truth though. The folks that I appreciate as being like minded do tend to have something that set them apart at an early age, other than an interest or aptitude for science.

    The whole thing of course boils down to the nature vs nurture debate, which I'm afraid we're not going to settle on slashdot. That said, I'm not buying the argument that peer pressure is keeping kids from becoming technologists. If the urge is there (and most of us around here probably recognize that urge), it won't be repressed. Worst would be that a kid becomes a closet technologist, but the True Calling will come out one day.

  • Of course, if you read the article, you'd realize he said the same thing:
    "But sometime probably between 2010 and 2020, we lose the largest single factor that lets us continue on that curve--our ability to make things smaller."
    Of course, what we call Moore's Law was really nothing more than an off the cuff remark by an "important person", so by following it, the semiconductor industry has validated it. How important was Gordon Moore in 1965? In what sense was his prediction "self-fulfilling"? Do you think that the advances in semiconductor fabrication that have occurred in the last 35 years happened because Moore made his prediction?

    Why not give him credit for making a bold prediction that turned out to be right?

  • No, it just means that when the invasion comes, the E.T's will enjoy playing Quake all that more.

    Christan
  • We could debate Bush's politics or lack of any sense but what would that do? What seems a bit odd is how Moore applauds Bush for what he hasn't done. Re: Not repealing Clintons presidential dictates. How can we expect any progress with such low expectations. This is how W. has made a life. What a pity for all of us. People like Moore have and should help us slower folk empower ourselves with higher expectations. Piece, Captain Ober
  • But the one data point we have (humanity) is keen on exploration, isn't shy at all about interfering in the affairs of others, and is pretty bad at cleaning up after itself.
    Of course on that scale of 1-10 million years to colonise the galaxy humanity is at 0. By the time we come to colonising another star (100 years from now?) we might have curbed our instincts somewhat. Or maybe not.

  • Re:$Bush &Moore (Score:4)

    by RedWizzard ( 192002 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:09PM (#252673)
    Still, I kind of like the guy giving away 50% of his fortune (wouldn't see old $Bill doing that!)
    Actually that's exactly the sort of thing Gates would do. He already gives a lot of money away and I believe he's stated that he doesn't intend to leave much to his kids. Yes, his company is morally bankrupt but he really believes that he is doing right by his customers. He's a fanatic, he's not Satan.
  • Since this is a tiny fraction of the age of the galaxy, there should be evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence everywhere. So, where is everybody?

    Easy... they're all living Beyond the Rim.

    Sorry, some lame Babylon 5 humor. I'll shut up now.

  • Nope it depends soley on the speed of light, the distance between them and us, how fast they developed, and of course if they exist.

    Well I think its a good chance they may be out there, considering the size of the universe, the development time and the finite speed of light its unlikely SETI will ever show us anything. But while I don't think NASA should be funding it, I think that it is an interesting project that should be.
  • Why not?? We're not the Borg, alot of progress comes from individuals and small groups pursuing their own ideas. We already have foundations giving large money to a few schools .. why not one that's willing to give small funding to a large number of projects? -- Bitmanhome

    Why not? Because giving away small chunks of money in public programs ALWAYS gets screwed up, and leads to horrible graft, corruption, waste, etc. There's a SMALL chance that you can give big chunks away fairly, because enough people will pay attention to the details. But there's NO chance that you could give $100M in $20K grants without funding a lot of brothers-in-law of polticians and cheeseball con artists. Remember when Nixon declared war on cancer? (Probably not, but I do.) All of a sudden, all my friends in legit cancer research had a HARDER time getting funding, because the influx of funds drew a lot of professional grantsmen who knew how to work the system with stupid 'sound bite' projects. There was a chilling effect on good research. It's the same process.

    Try to keep the public sector out of things that are both complicated and important. If they have to be involved, make sure it's at a simple and high-enough level that nobody can make too much of a profit by working the system.

    JMHO -- Trevor

  • education (Score:3)

    by Cephas Keken ( 224723 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:12PM (#252684) Homepage Journal
    Moore's comments on the education system in america strike home with me preety hard.
    You almost cannot learn what you need as a base for a technical career in a average school enviroment. With all the cut backs and distractions in schools these days the future geek of america are gonna keep sucking as a majority of those working in the industry right now. How many of us know a moron working as an admin? Heh how many of us are morons?
    once again we can see america getting flushed, and as far as I'm concerned at this point, we deserve it.

  • Since our chances of finding extraterrestrial life are more heavily dependent on the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial life and the probability that a signal from an extrasolar planet would reach this planet at all should aforementioned life exist, I would say no.

    Er... Well, y'know. You can't make an omelette without um... destroying a forest. Or something.

  • Yeah egalitarianism!!! (Score:4)

    by the real jeezus ( 246969 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @02:45PM (#252692)

    It's refreshing to see someone share the wealth like Gordon Moore does. These days, it seems that the accountants decide the fate of speculative research--How silly, especially when nearly all revolutionizing discoveries throughout history were due to sheer accidents or wacked-out ideas. Open letter to all you *illionaires: you can't take it with you!

    I think /. should interview him. I would like to find out what he thinks about psychedelics.



    Ewige Blumenkraft!

  • Why not? (Score:4)

    by Bitmanhome ( 254112 ) <bitman@pQUOTEobox.com minus punct> on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @02:19PM (#252693)
    Gordo said thusly:
    The federal government clearly can't give all of its support to Caltech and MIT. But I lean toward making the best even better.
    We don't want to build the infrastructure necessary to give away $100 million in $20,000 grants. We would be much more likely to look at the needs of an entire school, rather than trying to do individual projects.
    Why not?? We're not the Borg, alot of progress comes from individuals and small groups pursuing their own ideas. We already have foundations giving large money to a few schools .. why not one that's willing to give small funding to a large number of projects?

    I think it would be cool to give $5,000-20,000 grants to masters and doctorate students to finish their research, and make something useful out of it. If other people find it useful, then a company can buy it and market it. With $100 mil to give away, they can certainly afford the infrastructure.

    Hmm .. I seem to remember this topic being discussed before (hasn't everything?) but I can't seem to find it..

    -B

  • $Bush &Moore (Score:3)

    by fiiz ( 263633 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @02:24PM (#252695) Homepage
    Weired, this Mooore.
    He donates half of his Intel shares ($5 Billion) to environmental & educational programs, and on the other hand he sat on Bush's environmental advisory committee and does not even criticise the guy...(and we all know what Bush has done to the environment, including getting rid of the Kyoto agreements and licking every oil company's arse.)
    I suppose he's just confused.
    Still, I kind of like the guy giving away 50% of his fortune (wouldn't see old $Bill doing that!)
    --


  • IIRC, it was part of an economic analysis Moore did as general manager of the semiconductor business unit at Fairchild.

    --Blair
  • Intel has grown about a thousand-fold in the past thirty years, while AMD has been trading in the same $10-30 range for the same thirty years, except for a bubble last year, wherupon AMD followed the rest of the bubble into the shitter.

    When AMD actually invents a technology, I'll start to believe they're a viable technology play instead of just a guy selling apples on the streetcorner who is surprised that people like apples.

    --Blair
    "I've mentioned Steve Jobs. This thread is now ended."

  • General Flexability (Score:5)

    by Migelikor1 ( 308578 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @02:15PM (#252701) Homepage
    I think people generally forget that "Moore's Law" was an off the cuff optimistic guess made in an interview with Electronics Magazine in 1965. He was pretty lucky with his guess, which has held generally true for the last 35 years. The guess of exponential growth fit in really nicely with the growing industry, and emergence of the microchip in everyday life. Greater demand meant greater research, and lower prices, spurring even greater demand. However, I see a set of different factors greatly slowing that cycle. First, as Moore said in the interview, the limits of the medium. Sub-atomic transistors are still pretty far on the horizon, and our current designs can't get much smaller. Second, a factor Moore didn't mention, the eventual market saturation. There is no radical new application on the horizon for the microchip to cause its continued spread at such a great rate. Sure, we all like to get faster, and faster computers, but most people already have somthing that works. Unless a new market opens, investment will slow, as will research, and the entire cycle will slow.

  • Moore's New Law (Score:4)

    by Peridriga ( 308995 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @01:47PM (#252702)
    So more made a law.... then he changed it... now he's changed it again (but, made it so the law changes on it's own?) [intresting idea]

    so.... This is how it goes
    It every 2 years the number of tranistors in chips will double
    Every 10 years that number (e.g. 2) will double.
    Every 15 years Moore will change his law again.


    --- My Karma is bigger than your...
    ------ This sentence no verb
  • I've seen this argument repeated in various forms, and one thing always gets me: we tend to forget that we are an emerging civilization. We're moving ever closer to a cabled society, and yet, we still have thousands of satellites. As our technology progresses, our detection abilities are just that much more refined. And besides, how much longer until we start seeing public efforts to broadcast REALLY strong radio signals out, just to see if anyone is listening? It's not JUST 1940's tv that is out there, you know.

    (Ok, so Contact affected me in more ways than one :)

    On a more sci-fi note, how exactly do you think spaceships will communicate? I'd sure hope not by 5,000,000 miles of cat5 :)

  • Remember, these were serious scientific predictions made by highly regarded scientists of a certain age. Seeing as it would take several million years just to travel to the other side of our galaxy (unless we reach a signifigant fraction of lightspeed), I think 10 million years is a tad optimistic. Establishing self-sustaining colonies, the kind that can re-create the massive ships needed for thousands of year long journeys, might take far longer than is feasible in the 'short' life of our galaxy. Just because Europeans colonized America in a few hundred years does not mean that space will be anywhere near as easy.

  • Re:Moore's Law (Score:3)

    by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @07:38PM (#252708) Journal
    You will find that Moore's Law holds even before silicon. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Moore's Law will hold even after we have reached the limits of silicon technology

    Sorry. Didn't you read the fine print?
    "Past performance is not a guarantee of future results."

  • You have a very good point. Double the processing power= double the amount of ETI reports we can go through, but there is another law that will keep the chances low: lightspeed. 186,282 Miles Per Second. The closest star is 4.3 light years... 8.6 years for a round trip. Then you take the chances of a planet existing around Alpha Centauri (low), take the chances that the planet orbits in the life zone (which is relatively thin), then take the chances that life would evolve, then take the chances that the life would become intelligent, then take the chances that that intelligent life would live long enough to develop radio, then take the chances that the ETI would be seaching the particular radio band we are broadcasting on... and so on. Then apply that for planets thousands or millions of lightyears away, and you see that processing speed is but a minor factor in the search for ETI. As I said, you did bring up a good point, though.
  • As a high school student and also what some would consider a "nerd," I have some insight. What you speak of is definately a problem, but another problem would be that schools now tend to focus on software. There are countless programming classes at my school, yet there are no basic electronics or that type of class. The only way that I am able to take a class like that is to go to a VoTech, which takes 4 hours of my 7 hour day. I hardly have time for my other classes. I wish there was another way, perhaps distance learning.

    Tyler

  • 2 Years or 18 months (Score:3)

    by webmaestro ( 323340 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @01:44PM (#252712) Journal
    This article says that the Moore's Law says the number of transistors will double every two years. I always heard it was every 18 months.

    Tyler

  • Chances of Finding Extraterrestrial life (Score:5)

    by webmaestro ( 323340 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @01:53PM (#252713) Journal
    If the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years, does that mean that our chances of finding extraterrestrial life also double every two years?

    Tyler

  • Moore's OTHER law (Score:5)

    by Tyler Eaves ( 344284 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @01:42PM (#252714)
    The number of idiots using computers is directly proportionate to the number of AOL CDs

  • Moore's Law (Score:4)

    by mkarpinski ( 409464 ) <mkarpinski@ma c . c om> on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @02:40PM (#252715)
    If you look back to the early days of computer development (circa 1940s) to current technology and extrapolate the amount of computing cycles/$1000 ---- You will find that Moore's Law holds even before silicon. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Moore's Law will hold even after we have reached the limits of silicon technology (predicted within the next 15 years).

  • There is no radical new application on the horizon for the microchip to cause its continued spread at such a great rate.

    The converse of Moore's law is that a constant amount of computing power gets drastically cheaper with time. Perhaps there isn't much market for a 10 GHz microprocessor, but there is probably a market for a 150 MHz Pentium-equivalent microcontroller, if one could be had for $20 or less. For the immediate future, Moore's law means proliferation of computers, not necessarily dramatic new technology.

  • The Fermi objection (Score:4)

    by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @02:32PM (#252717) Journal

    The great physicist Enrico Fermi raised the following objection to the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (as distinct from extraterrestrial life):

    It should take about 1-10 million years for an intelligent race to colonize a space the size of our galaxy, even without faster-than-light travel. (The argument is exponential - we form n colonies, then they form n colonies each, and so on.) Since this is a tiny fraction of the age of the galaxy, there should be evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence everywhere. So, where is everybody?

    One could say that perhaps other forms of intelligent life dislike exploration, or that they don't interfere in the affairs of other civilizations, or that they leave no trace of their presence. But the one data point we have (humanity) is keen on exploration, isn't shy at all about interfering in the affairs of others, and is pretty bad at cleaning up after itself.

    This is being accepted by a growing number of SETI researchers, who believe (somewhat controversially) that humanity is the most advanced form of life in our own galaxy, at least.

  • simple: i bought my laptop two years ago for $1000. Guess how much its worth right now? ;-)

  • Re:The question they should have asked (Score:4)

    by DarenN ( 411219 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @02:06PM (#252720) Homepage
    Maybe it's because Intel got into bed with RAMBUS, and after a little foreplay signed the prenup. Then, on the honeymoon, after some more serious foreplay let their hand stray downwards, and found.....

    Well, considering an article [slashdot.org] posted earlier, you can finish that in your own head. :o)

    Add that to the fact that AMD's lower clocked chips are outperforming the P4's in many ways, and that Intel techs were giving out publicly about the design restrictions put on them by use of the RDRAM, and the general downturn in Tech company fortunes on the stock exchange recently, and you have many reasons.

    Sorry about the serious (and incomplete) response, but I'm just too tired, and my sense of humour has gone to sleep without me (the bastard). *yawn*

    I like the way he is supporting "unusual" research, though. It's the stuff that everyone considers insane that can work ou the coolest, like the Wright brothers and flying. Their neighbours must've thought them mad!
    And I'd like to hear more on his ideas of "practical enviornmentalism". Too many enviornmentalists are radical thugs and enviornmentalism is excuse they are using now.
    And the other end of the spectrum is just as bad (G.W Bush - "I'll protect the enviornment as long as those corporations that are my buddies don't need those areas to make more money than you, Joe Sixpack, could dream of". [BTW, I paraphrased])

    Yes that last statement was flamebait, and I'm not even a citizen of the US. So sue me :o)

  • The Goku Rebuttal (Score:5)

    by Flying Headless Goku ( 411378 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:00PM (#252721) Homepage
    Perhaps, once a civilization reaches a high enough level of development, its citizens become satisfied and cease interacting with the universe, like an enlightened yogi disappearing into his own navel.

    In our case, this is happening with automated production and escapist entertainment. Once we have nanotechnology and perfect virtual reality, we will be able to trick ourselves into eternal happiness, and won't want to bother with anything else.

    Any pleasure-driven intelligence which learns to satisfy its survival needs without effort will eventually just turn on its pleasure center and live in perfect contentment.

    Not that it really makes a difference. They may be out there, but they don't want to be bothered.
    --
  • Take as much math and science as you can. There's really no need to rush into 'technical' classes. As you've observed, there are plenty of 'programming' classes offered. Learn your Calculus and your Physics. Getting a foundation in the basics will make, i.e. an EE curriculum, much easier when you make it to college.

    Dashing too fast into 'implementation' stuff just turns you into a one-trick freak on whatever implementation you've focused on.
  • 'Admins' are the janitors in the technical universe. Nothing at all makes up for a lack in understanding of the basics. God knows I wish I'd taken much more hard science and math when I was younger.

  • Re:How will Moore's law be affected (Score:3)

    by Spagornasm ( 444846 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @07:27PM (#252732) Homepage
    In theory, quantum computing would allow fantastically fast computing. There are, as usual, a few hurdles.

    The first of these is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This states that you cannot know both the location AND velocity of a sub atomic particle (protons and on down). Stated otherwise, you cannot measure its location without changing its velocity, and vice versa. Or, you cannot separate the observer from the observed. For example, if you wanted to bounce a photon of light off of a proton so you could "see" it, the photon would have to have an extremely small wavelentgh (smaller than the diameter of the proton). This means that the photon would carry a lot of angular momentum, and when said photon collides with the proton, path of the photon would change, but SO WOULD THE PROTON - and there is no way of knowing in what way that path changed. The upshot of this is that you can never accurately predict what a particle will be doing at a given location. This is why electron orbitals are represented as probability clouds (in actual physics labs) as opposed to the more popular "solar system" model.

    What the HUP means as far as processors go is that there has to be a reliable way of controlling (starting, stopping, redirecting, DETECTING) super small particles for it to work. As of right now, even in theory, we have no way of doing that.

    Near as I can tell, being a failed physics major, the only way we'll get quantum computers is when we finally crack the GUT's and String Theory (the reconcilliatioin of newtonian and quantum mechanics). Albert Einstein, Steve Weinberg, Richard Feynman, and Steven Hawking have all been stumped by this problem. In fact, Einstein compared it to the biblical "thorn in the chest" because he felt his theories were incomplete while that problem existed.

    You know what's even more incredible? More than likely, FTL (faster-than-light) computers are closer. I think that's another post, though.

  • Great quote (Score:5)

    by 6EQUJ5 ( 446008 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @01:54PM (#252733) Homepage

    "Even a small probability multiplied by 10^22 gets pretty big."

    If only common people understood such things. Be it the chance of two hydrogen atoms fusing in the sun, or the emergence of a technological world...
  • I remember reading last year that when AMD was beating the pants off of them with the 1G Athlon, Intel was still revved for producing P3-600's, more in line with Moore's law.

    Maybe you forget that there isn't a difference in the number of transistors in P3 600's and P3 1000's. Clock speed has nothing to do with Moores "Law".
  • can't remember where I heard this quote but it seems scientifically sound to me:

    "the best evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence is that none of it has tried to contact us"

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