{"id":1953,"date":"2015-08-21T17:04:37","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T09:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tembusu.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/?p=1953"},"modified":"2025-09-25T16:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T08:25:11","slug":"moores-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/2015\/08\/moores-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Moore’s Law 50th Birthday: What is a Transistor?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part of the science and technology column at Treehouse. This column aims to distill issues related to science and technology, presenting them in an easy-to-read, digestible format.<\/em><\/p>\n

2015 is the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of a statement that has gone on to shape the 20th<\/sup> century: Moore\u2019s Law<\/i>. It states: \u201cThe number of transistors that can be fitted onto an integrated circuit will double every 24 months.\u201d What this translates to for the average consumer, is that computers double their processing ability every 24 months or so. This statement is not really a law, but rather, a bold prediction of the future that Gordon Moore, intel\u2019s founder, made based on his observations of the then burgeoning electronics scene.<\/p>\n

Many electronics companies in fact, have used Moore\u2019s Law<\/i> as a guiding principle in their Research and Development of integrated circuits and computers, aiming to follow the exponential increase in transistors that the \u201claw<\/i>\u201d follows. Transistors are present in every electronic device, and they serve as building blocks of electronic components and machines. Like proteins are to cells, so are transistors to electronics.<\/p>\n

What then, is a transistor? A transistor is essentially a switch. Computer processors in your smart phones and laptops today has millions of these small \u201cswitches\u201d in them. Intel\u2019s latest commercial 8-core i7 Haswell chip (the commercial flagship chip of choice if you were to buy a PC at the store today) has 2.8 billion of these transistors, all in an object with a physical footprint of a matchbox. They are laid up in a certain order like how a normal circuit would be laid up, in series or in parallel, except now there are billions of them in a circuit. These circuits execute commands by passing electric current through the labyrinth of transistors. When a voltage is applied, transistors simply yield a result of a \u2018Yes\u2019 or a \u2018No\u2019 (a 1 or a 0). The computer takes these electric signal codes and translates them into a string of texts on screen (101000001010101) that humans can then see and manipulate. It is this finite permutation of numbers and commands that allows computers to execute calculations and computational processes. The more switches and more permutations there are to switch combinations, the more a computer is able to process more commands. This makes a computer with more transistors inherently more powerful than a computer with less.<\/p>\n

\"mooreslaw\"<\/a>
\nEvolution of transistor designs. All of them are single transistors except the one from 1997 which is a chip that consists of hundreds of thousands of transistors.<\/em><\/p>\n

Transistors used to be built exclusively with electrodes in vacuum tubes. These were physically large and cumbersome to deal with – imagine having a computer with millions of beer bottle-sized transistors serving as switches! The discovery and invention of semiconductors made these big, bulky tubes obsolete as a means to control electric currents. The advancement in semiconductor designs was followed by the revolution in solid-state electronics which allowed transistors to shrink, since semi-conductors did not require the empty vacuum spaces to manipulate electric currents. Companies like Intel and Fairchild led the way in the 60s and 70s. And that is how we arrive at the Moore\u2019s law. Transistors have effectively been shrinking at an exponential rate, and this has allowed circuit designers to fit ever more of these switches to create ever more powerful computers.<\/p>\n

Alas, this \u2018law\u2019 will definitely have to come to an end when it does not become economically viable to physically shrink transistors anymore. Sometimes it does not make sense to continue making a device as powerful as possible for the sake of it. For now, computing needs continue to outstrip the supply and advancements in processor designs, but this may not always be the case. Other factors like reliability, power consumption and effectiveness are coming to the fore, and the number of transistors in a processor isn\u2019t always everything. Apple\u2019s new macbook for example uses Intel\u2019s M chips which have less transistors than older chips but are optimised for power consumption and less computationally intensive applications \u2013 not everyone needs a super computer to surf the web or write essays on Word.<\/p>\n

Despite this definite certainty of the law\u2019s demise, the Moore\u2019s Law continues to confound observers and academics, surviving long beyond what Gordon Moore himself thought was possible. Throughout the 20th<\/sup> century, many have predicted the demise of the Moore\u2019s law and failed. Today, most experts believe 2020s will see this coming to pass. But as for today, the law<\/i> is still law and we continue to enjoy the benefits of these technologies that is governed by Moore\u2019s Law.<\/i><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Images from Wikipedia Commons.<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/i>
\nZhimin is a third year Mechanical Engineering student who finds reason to be curious about other disciplines. He is an amateur triathlete, divemaster and a paratrooper. An avid adventure-seeker, he never backs down from a challenge and enjoys pushing the boundaries of the human condition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe number of transistors that can be fitted onto an integrated circuit will double every 24 months.\u201d On the 50th anniversary of the Moore’s Law, Zhimin Sim revisits this often quoted adage and attempts to explain briefly what this transistor is and how it helps our computers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":1944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_type-academic","theme-science-technology","scope-others","flavour-informative"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1953"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2010,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions\/2010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}