Moore's Law is 40

Today is the 40th anniversary of Gordon Moore’s famous law that stipulated that the number of transistors per integrated circuit would grow exponentially. Essentially saying that processor speeds would double every 18 months to two years. And for four decades this had held true – and Intel estimates that it should for another couple of years before they start running into theoretical limits. Alternatives to silica based transistors have been popping up, such as carbon nano-tubes, molecular adders and others that while promising probably won’t make it into any sort of commercial production. (At least not outside the US gov’t ;P)

I for one look forward to the day when we are able to break free of our traditional computer model and explore an entirely different paradigm for mechanical computation.