Comments on: SIGGRAPH 2008: The quest for more pixels

By: Dan Kaminsky

Dan Kaminsky — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 03:27:44 +0000

Moore’s Law as a measure of transistor count? Sure, it’s doing fine.

Moore’s Law as a measure of computational power? Not so much. Do you realize how many of those transistors are just CPU cache? L1, L2, L3…more and more and more layers. Sure, we’re getting more cores, but lets be honest — nobody really knows how to use ‘em, not like we knew how to use more clock. And as we learn to parallelize, we’re abandoning x86 entirely for the 50x speedup.

Maybe a better way to say it: “Moore’s Law is dead. Long live Moore’s law” — as we finally are forced to migrate off sequential computation to actually experience its advantages.

By: Sciurus

Sciurus — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:28:21 +0000

Wow, people are quick with the whole transistor count thing. Moore’s Law is the cat’s pajamas!

By: Sciurus

Sciurus — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:25:15 +0000

pentium IV: 42,000,000 transistors
Core 2 Duo: 291,000,000 transistors
I think Moore’s Law is still cookin’ with gas.
Old slang is the bee’s knees!

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:20:00 +0000

moore’s law is, and has always been, about transistor count. NOT core clock frequency. And it’s definitely not dead yet.

By: Decepticon

Decepticon — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:29:58 +0000

Wow, these demos are amazing. Can’t wait to see if they ever get implemented in big box office productions.

By: underdog5004

underdog5004 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:20:48 +0000

Wow, I was really impressed by the “Photo Tourism” section, although I have a feeling it’s not the same as actually being there :)

By: Mr. Mediocre

Mr. Mediocre — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:31:04 +0000

So many sweet things this year. So many…

By: hawkeye18

hawkeye18 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:19:41 +0000

Great article! One massive, glaring error, though, and it's one that no tech writer should ever make. It's regarding your statement about Moore's law, which I get the distinct impression that you've never actually read. Moore didn't state that processor SPEED would double, but that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on a chip would double about every two years.

And in case you haven't noticed, processors have been growing wider, not taller. Take, say, a Pentium 4 531... 3 ghz, 125 million transistors. It was hot shit about two years ago, the best money could buy.

Now, let's take a Core 2 Extreme, an X6900. Not even the best money can buy nowadays; there are better, but it has a clock speed of 3.2ghz, still better than the 531... and 291 million transistors. That's 2.3 times more transistors.

Seems Moore's law is still alive and quite well.

I do look forward to the 3D exploded view diagrams, though. Those are a bitch to try to figure out in 2D!