Development of a Computer

The complexity of computer integrated circuits doubles very year. Retailers and buyers offen find out to their horror that even as their new top-of-the-line PCs are being delivered to their door step, research labs are already churning out new faster, more powerful chips that would make thier new computers obsolete. It is impossible to chase the technology so closely that you are always ahead in terms of your hardware, unless you are the very same person researching that technology.

Moore's Law
Gordon E. Moore, Chairman of Intel corperation until he retired in 1989 (Intel is one of the biggest microprocessor companies of all times since the 1960s) was one of the first men to witness the genesis of an invention that would profoundly change human civilization. He was the supervisor of the first project ever to build a "computer on a chip"; a micro processor.

From as early as 1965, Moore noticed that microchips were doubling in circuit density (and thus in their potential computational power) every year or so. In fact, the development of the microchip is so predictable and important, it has been canonized as a law--"Moore's Law."

Moore first mentioned the famous observation of such a pattern (almost just like a comment) to the media when he was interviewed. When hugely publicised, the "little comment" became known as "Moore's Law." However, as year after year went by with Moore's law still proving itself to be true, many realised that "Moore's Law" was anything but a joke. Microprocessor circuit densitys were doubling every year and speeds of new processors were increasing even faster.

Even after 25 years,Moore's law still holds. The truth finally set in, that computer technology was improving at blinding speeds. The next question that pop ups is when is it ever going to stop.

Pushing the microprocessors

The strategy used to increase the speed and performance of processor chips is actually to pack more circuits into smaller, more compact dimensions. There may be some of you who may be surprised to hear that. (There are offen misconceptions by people who think the bigger a computer is, the faster it should be able to work.)

It would only make sense that smaller and shorter circuits in a microship would mean better performance. Since eletricity needs time to pass through circuits, shorter, smaller circuits in a processor would mean shorter relay time between its other transistors and components, hence improving performance. The first processor chip introduced by Intel ,the 108 000 hz 4004 chip uses technology that packs circuits of 10 micron size onto the chip. Today, Intel's new generation chips, the pentium 3 processors probably uses 0.13 micro technology and goes up to speeds of 1000 Mhz (that's 1 billion hertzs per second !!), a far cry from the first 4004 chip.

The past and today
When the microprocessor race first started, experts in the microrocessor industry thought that the strategy of shrinking circuits could not continue for long. They expected that circuits could go down to 1 micron size before they couldn't be shrunk anymore. The technology at that time simply wasn't able to let them even imagine the creation of such compact circuits.

Today, the research labs at Intel are working with circuits sizes of less than a quarter of a micron (0.13 micron as previously mentioned), doing what once was thought impossible. Each leap in processing power of these chips requires new technology that shrinks the size of circuit lines so that ever more devices could be packed onto a sliver of silicon.

In the 25 years since the first true microprocessor, Intel and its competitors have been able to pull off the stream of technological breakthroughs needed to sustain the computer revolution. But how far can semiconductor technology go? As microcircuit transistors shrink from microscopic to nanoscopic dimensions, is Moore's Law about to run out of steam?

In a 1997 interview with Scientific Americian, Moore himself said that the strategy of squeezing more into less may not hold forever and sooner or later, they will hit a wall. Already, chips today packs 10s of millions of circuits into circuit lines of near 10 nanometers size. It is not known how much more performance such a strategy can produce in newer chips.

Future of the computer
When the advances of microprocessor technology finally hits the wall and circuits are beyond anymore shrinking, more computers are expected to use dual processing, triple processing or even more. This means that instead of using single chips to perform operations, the compter shares the job between 2 or more processors.

Already, supercomputers at companies like Intel, NASA and IBM use fleets of processors and are hence able to process jobs at amazing speeds impossible for single processor computers. Workstations, animation CAD computers and other video editing computers use the dual processor technology.

The only problem that lies here is with the operating systems. As the number of processors increase, the operating system, which takes care of all the tasks inside a computer will have to be more complex to be able to support them. Further more, the task of splitting the operations is complicated would be a big problem as more and more processors are incoperated.

To be able to let the processors run at top speeds, memory allocation areas like the RAM (random access memory), cache and also the BUS (the connection that links up the component) will also have to increase in speed and size.

However, it will still be sometime before the current technology hits a wall and we will have to resort to such tactics and the end-users and buyers like us will have nothing to worry about for the time being. No matter what, computers will only get better and faster, even if Moore's law doesn't hold anymore.

 

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a students' production for thinkquest®