Moore's Law Is...by Elmer Epistola

Moore's Law Needs A Rescue

By Elmer Epistola

- Posted on July 19, 2026

Moore's Law, some people say, is already dead. Moore's Law, the greatest law that ever governed the modern world in which we all live, can no longer help us … nor hurt us.

Moore's Law, formulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, stated that the complexity of the circuit on a microchip would double every 12 to 18 months, depending on which decade we're talking about. And it did - from the 4004 of the early 70's to the Pentium 4's of today, it certainly did.

There were many variants of this law as well: that computing power would double every 18 months, that the cost of computers would halve every 18 months, that memory density will double every 18 months, that the number of lines of code for every software release will…well…you get the picture. Some of these were probably as good as the original law, but some looked like they were put forward just for the verbal fun of it.

To be honest with you, I have never been a big fan of Moore's Law. I had doubts about it when I first heard of it. It certainly didn't sound as commanding as Newtonian physics, nor as unbreakable as the Laws of Thermodynamics, nor as mathematical as Einstein's Relativity.

But Moore's Law was a 'strong' law alright. First of all, it has remained true over the past 4 decades, which is why everyone (well, almost everyone) considered this law very sacred. Secondly, the semiconductor industry has grown so much that Moore's Law has subsequently gained power over downstream and upstream technologies and industries. For it to hold true for four decades while remaining applicable to a huge plethora of high-technology enterprises, it must be really compelling.

As it became the 'in' thing, everyone mentioned it in their speeches during the boom years of Intel in the 80's and 90's. Nobody dared contradict it at that time. Cursed be anyone who deviated from the technology roadmap as predicted by Moore's Law, for he or she shall be left behind biting the dust of competition. Indeed, companies were so afraid of not staying abreast with Moore's Law that they did everything within their power to meet it. They invested, invented, innovated, and even infested, all in the name of obeying Moore's Law, so that they can double computing power and halve computing costs every 1.5 years.

But not faster than that. Because an even more extraordinary thing about the magical truth of Moore's Law is that it wasn't enough to keep up with it. You must also avoid overtaking it. If not, you'll find yourself with a supermicroprocessor that's impractical to write software for, or a wafer fabrication plant whose cost can not be justified by its revenues.

And so Moore's Law, a bold prediction allegedly based on merely three data points when it was made, became true. What a self-prophesizing law it was, sanctified by technology leaders who were so obsessed of staying on top that they let Moore's Law drive their board meetings year in and year out. And they reaped rewards for doing so. The technology sector has advanced so rapidly in the 80's and 90's that everyone changed computers as quickly as they changed shoes, and they could very well afford to do so. Everyone had a glamorous computer job then, and nobody feared being 'downsized.'

But times have changed.

After Moore's Law has ushered in the art of doing business at the 'speed of light', shrunk the planet and brought humanity ever closer together, and facilitated the complete decoding of the human genome, it has started to lose steam. Noise is now becoming more than a nuisance in complex circuits that have become so small and so dense. The leap from 0.09 micron wafer fab process technology to the next level would cost 6 billion dollars, a cost so staggering that only Intel in the whole wide world is big enough to make money from it. From the technical and economic points of view, therefore, it seems that Moore's Law has just about reached its limit. Moore's Law is finally succumbing to the Law of Diminishing Returns.

And for the first time, consumers and corporations alike have begun defying Moore's Law. People no longer upgrade their computers or cell phones as quickly as before. There's really no need to do so anyway. New software releases by Microsoft these past few years offered no breakthroughs from the users' point of view, and did not justify the hardware upgrade that MS wanted people to make. And without consumer base support, companies couldn't prep up Moore's Law any further than their purse would allow them to.

And this new reality has come with a price. People were so accustomed to quick recoveries during down cycles in the semicon industry that they thought they'd have recovered by 2002 when the 2000 downturn set in. After all, Moore's Law promises quick technology turn-arounds that equate to quick economic upsurges. We're now midway into 2003, and I still haven't seen the sharp volume ramp-ups that characterize the end of a down cycle.

Even the job market got a punch on the head from Moore's Law. High-caliber engineers from all over the world have been driven out of their jobs, and it's not just because of the global economic slump that we're in, but also because of the superexpectations from Moore's Law that lured everyone into taking up computer and electronics engineering in the 90's. Now the world has a surplus of these engineers trying to push each other out of the technology job market.

If an upturn doesn't happen soon, then the semicon industry itself may find itself gasping for oxygen. There's only one way to save ourselves from this, and that is to save Moore's Law. For whatever it's worth, for all the good and bad things that it has done, I think it deserves a rescue from us all.

There's only one way to rescue Moore's Law, and that is to do what we've done to make it self-prophesize for four long decades - to fuel with burning passion a brilliant vision to change the world. We need another round of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Marc Andreesen to come up with the next big thing. Something that will once again capture the fascination of 7 billion people and make trillions of dollars change hands in a frenzy.

If we pull this off, then we'll save Moore's Law, and perpetrate the greatest rescue of the new century. The rescue of our future.

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