Some writers have claimed that excess computing power will reduce the effort put into designing new and more powerful chips. Even when most users can’t make use of the additional power, fear of losing out to the competition will keep designers pushing. Eventually, it will become too expensive to keep developing the new technology, but we are a lot further from those limits.
This sounds like Marx’s “overproduction” thesis: competition drives producers to make more and more regardless of demand. Generally, that sort of thing hasn’t happened.
Specifically in the computer processing market: really, only gamers and datacenters buy the fastest available general-purpose processors. Other folks buy computers with an eye to convenience, portability, appearance, battery life, etc. rather than raw processing power.
Both home and datacenter markets seem to be shifting away from raw power and towards energy efficiency (i.e. maximizing computing power per watt) which increases battery life and decreases datacenter costs. This might actually end up propping up Moore’s law anyway, as the more efficient transistors get, the more of them can be put on the same chip without overheating.
This will bottom out too, eventually, when a battery charge lasts longer than the device itself, or datacenter power and cooling costs become negligible.
Moore’s Law Won’t Fade for Business Reasons
Some writers have claimed that excess computing power will reduce the effort put into designing new and more powerful chips. Even when most users can’t make use of the additional power, fear of losing out to the competition will keep designers pushing. Eventually, it will become too expensive to keep developing the new technology, but we are a lot further from those limits.
This sounds like Marx’s “overproduction” thesis: competition drives producers to make more and more regardless of demand. Generally, that sort of thing hasn’t happened.
Specifically in the computer processing market: really, only gamers and datacenters buy the fastest available general-purpose processors. Other folks buy computers with an eye to convenience, portability, appearance, battery life, etc. rather than raw processing power.
Both home and datacenter markets seem to be shifting away from raw power and towards energy efficiency (i.e. maximizing computing power per watt) which increases battery life and decreases datacenter costs. This might actually end up propping up Moore’s law anyway, as the more efficient transistors get, the more of them can be put on the same chip without overheating.
This will bottom out too, eventually, when a battery charge lasts longer than the device itself, or datacenter power and cooling costs become negligible.