Unit 4, Listening 2, Moore’s Law

Moore’s Law

Announcer 1: Today, hugely sophisticated computers can be held in the palm of your hand. But originally, computers filled an entire room.

Announcer 2: Preparing Nellie to do a day’s work has become a well practiced routine[1].

Speaker 1:           Right, keys in. Can you check disk oil level please, Harry?

Speaker 2:           Oil OK.

Speaker 3:           OK, disk up to speed.

Speaker 4:           Hello, alternator house, disk oil and temperature OK, is it OK your end?

Speaker 5:           Motor on. OK for standby[2].

Announcer 1: Forty years after the first electronic computers were developed . . .

Speaker 6:           Standby coming on.

Announcer 1: . . . their size has decreased dramatically. How has computing technology advanced so rapidly? The answer lies in the size of circuit boards, which have rapidly become smaller and smaller.

Gordon Moore was the co-founder and chairman of Intel, back in 1965, when he formulated[3] what has come to be known as Moore’s law. Observing how technology had advanced up to that point, Moore said that the number of transistors that can fit on a circuit board would double every two years. This increases computational power very quickly. In fact, each doubling of transistor density actually quadruples[4] the effective computational power, because as transistors shrink[5], so does the time it takes to perform their switching operations—so, we get twice the amount of transistors in the same space, working at twice the speed. This also results in a lower cost per unit as the same computational power can be created more cheaply.

The effect has been very noticeable in the consumer market. For example, the development of cell phones, from early models to complex smartphones, in less than 30 years is strongly linked to Moore’s law, as are processing speed, memory capacity, and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras.

Industry experts now believe we are approaching the end of Moore’s Law. Current techniques are reaching their capacity, and the technology required to go even smaller would cost too much. Since 1965, much of the computing industry has set its targets for development based on Moore’s law, but with the technology apparently nearing its limits, the future is harder to predict.

Unit 4, Listening 2, Part 2, Activities A and D

Page 88

Professor:           OK, any reactions to the video?

Female 1:            The computer from 1968 was hilarious! It was huge! It’s really amazing when you compare, what did they call it, Nellie? When you compare Nellie with my smartphone.

Professor:           Exactly! Fifty years ago, computers were enormous. Twenty years ago, my computer took up most of my desk. Then we started carrying around laptops. Now, computers are, well, phone-sized. Or even smaller, really. Scientists at MIT are testing a tiny computer “pill” that has a microphone, a thermometer, and a battery. The idea is that we could swallow it, and it would collect information about us from inside our bodies. Astonishing, right?

So, the video focused on the size of circuit boards, more specifically how circuit boards have decreased in size since the 1960s. Before we go any further, can anyone remind us what a circuit board is?

Male 1: Um, it’s a board that holds electrical circuits inside a computer. The main one, the motherboard, basically facilitates communication between different parts of the computer.

Female 2:            And it provides connectors with external electronics, too. It’s like the brain of the computer.

Professor:           OK, yes, the brain. That works. So, to extend that comparison, a circuit board could have millions of transistors, which would be like the brain cells. The video introduced us to Gordon Moore. Way back in 1965, he predicted that transistors would get smaller and smaller, meaning that we could put more of them on each circuit board. This has allowed computers to become not only smaller, but also faster. So, the video says that experts believe that we are reaching the limits of Moore’s law. Some scientists predict that we’ll have the smallest transistors possible within the next couple of years.

And, to an extent, the “computer pill” coming out of MIT reflects this. I mean, it’s pretty tiny, but it’s not any faster than a normal-sized smartphone. But maybe the debate over whether the limit of Moore’s law is in sight or not is not really all that important. I mean, a pill-sized computer has a pretty specific function, right? And while people are still excited by smaller, thinner phones, I can imagine that a time will come when we can’t make the latest phone any smaller and still be able to use it easily. So, in the end, what is easy and comfortable for us might slow technological advances more than the limits of Moore’s law.


[1] routine: noun the normal order and way in which you regularly do things

[2] standby: noun something that is ready

[3] formulate: verb to express your ideas in carefully chosen words

[4] quadruple: verb to make something four times bigger

[5] shrink: verb to become or make something smaller

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