Is Moore's Party Over?

The retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet brought a Wall Street Journal columnist to lament that "Mankind Nears the End of the Age of Speed." The article also mentioned the retirements of the supersonic Concorde and the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, as well as Boeing's abandonment of its concept airliner, the Sonic Cruiser. "The human race is slowing down," complained the author.

Reading that article made me pause to reflect on the slowdown of computing. For almost 50 years we have been riding Moore's Law's exponential curve. Oh, what a ride it has been! No other technology has ever improved at a geometric rate for decades. It has been nothing short of a wild party. But exponential trends always slow down eventually, and the end of "Moore's Party" may be near.

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