[qubex]

The economic implications of Moore's Law are quite clear to me. Roughly one observes that every 18 months the expected computing power one can buy per unit currency doubles. Of course this is predicated upon physical possibility. 32 years would imply another 21 process halving or so, and that would take features down from 14 nm to an untenable 0.7 nm. However, if you have a better estimate, I'd be glad to hear it.

[mikeash]

Note that 21 halvings doesn't take you from 14nm to 0.7nm, but rather to about 7 femtometers, or about 0.000007nm. For comparison, that's roughly 10x the size of a single proton.

I'd say a better estimate would be to assume density stops increasing around the point when feature size is the size of a silicon atom. I'm sure that'll be way off, but closer than estimating 21 more doublings.

[CmdrSprinkles]

Yes. Economically, my bank account gets larger every year. Ergo, I must be saving up all my birthday cash

I don't have an estimate. My point was simply to explain to you why your logic was flawed as we are nearing the limits of what Moore's Law can give us without some pretty massive changes. This isn't a case of "Clock speeds are capped. We are doomed. Oh, wait, we can just put two slower ones on the same die" and is more "So... we are out of physical space..."

Trends are great when you are trying to make sense of data and estimate how to move forward. But they should not be used in a manner that ignores actual data.