David Farrell, the autocrat, first-class CEO of May Department Stores from 1979-98, was fond of saying "Trees don't grow to the heavens." I love studying life cycles of businesses and products, so I took notice when the read that the retail axiom is proven once again with the decline of Moore's Law. The Economist created a compelling graphic and post about how the golden rule of microchips appears to be coming to an end.
In what has become scripture for the computer age, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, predicted that the cost of microchip transistors would continue to fall because the number that could be etched into a given surface area of silicon would double every two years or so. Derived from his 1965 paper, “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits”, and subsequent writings, Moore’s law, as his forecast came to be called, turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Treating it as a target, chipmakers have, every couple of years, produced a generation of smaller transistors and, therefore, cheaper computing power. However, it looks as though Moore’s law will not survive 2014.
