Michael Malone, top tech journo, says in The Herring that we should forget Moore’s law. The thesis is that, as the universe of chips expands, more buyers are sticking with older, lower-powered devices because they don’t need the extra power. The industry’s legacy chips – almost all of which are still being manufactured somewhere – are going to undermine the latest stuff and make it impossible for the chip makers to continue to make 67% annual improvements. He quotes Google’s Eric Schmidt: “We aren’t interested in getting maximum power for a high price. What we’re looking for is maximum functionality and that’s a whole different thing.” We should unwind our dependence on Moore’s law now before it’s too late. Difficult to see how we actually could, though, since it’s wired into the economy itself, determining investors’ expectations as much as techies’.
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Yawn yawn. Yet another example of the type of third rate journalism which the blogosphere blows up for 24 hours and then forgets. Basically, the article could have been called “Why Google doesn’t need top end chips”. But get this – not every one and every company is exactly like Google.
Holy cow! Fancy that! You mean you DON’T have a custom built 10,000 machine server cluster in your back yard? But you do play games? And they’re a bit slow? Well, don’t bother buying a new, cheap chip, because Moore’s law is irrelevent – remember!
Dur.