Moore’s Law

If you have ever worked around computers, you have probably heard of Moore’s Law. If not, it is very simple. Back in 1965, the cofounder of Intel, Gordon Moore, predicted that they would be able to double the number of transistors every 12 months (he later amended that to every two years) for approximately the same cost.

He surprised many the skeptics by being proven right all these years. Every few years someone would warn that Moore’s Law would hit a brick wall constructed by the laws of physics. So far, Moore’s prediction has been accurate.

Of course we are all the beneficiaries. Most of us carry around one or more devices in our pockets or purses that have computing power that far exceeds the computers I used at Yale University back in the 1970s.

So where does it stop? People at Intel say they can keep doubling the number of processors for many more generations. So the limits do not seem to be with capacity, but with speed. When microprocessors reached 3 gHz a few years ago, designers reached a limit. Make them go faster, and they overheat. In fact, they even start to melt.

To solve the problem, the industry started making chips that do several tasks at once. If you go to a computer store, you will see advertisement for quad-core chips. These are like four tiny computers on a single chip.

The challenge is how to effectively use these newer chips. Most of our operating systems were set up for a single engine not a parallel one. Many of the supercomputers at universities use parallel computing but the computer on your desk does not. Redesigning these systems for computers is a new challenge for the 21st century.

Programmers are certain they will meet the challenge. After all, the human brain is a massive parallel computer. In a sense, they will be designing programs to work just like your brain.

Isn’t that amazing? Our brightest computer scientists are attempting to write programs that essentially mimic the way our brains process information. Yet evolutionists tell us that our brain evolved by chance. Does anyone see a contradiction? I do. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.