‘Moore’s Law is becoming irrelevant’, that’s the statement recently pontificated by ARM CEO Warren East during an interview with MIT Technology Review’s Tom Simonite. Moore’s Law (named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore) states that the number of integrated circuits doubles about every 18 months which, in-turn, increases the speed (and therefore power consumption) of processors. According to some in the semiconductor field this trend looks to continue till 2015 to 2020 where it will then bottom out (provided the make-up continues to use silicon as the base platform). Mr. East thinks the days of increasing CPU’s raw power are coming to a close, and that efficiency will be the driving factor for future generations of processors. He states an example with the constraints of smartphones being dictated by battery power, which forces the integrated CPU to perform complex tasks efficiently rather than the raw-power most desktops and servers use. Today, countless companies are jumping on the efficiency band-wagon. AMD (not only their processors, but their video cards as well), Intel (look at their latest Xeon line) and even SIS (SoC’s for touch-devices, smart TV’s and media centers) as computing interest shifts from home-based desktop PC’s to mobile devices and data-farms.
ARM CEO Warren East (via ARM)
East focuses on data centers and explains that traditional server centers are located in obscure places with temperate climates (cooling is a big issue for data-farms), however as more and more people use mobile devices the more server centers are needed to keep up with demand. By using more efficient processors, these data centers can be reduced in overall size and power use (as ARM’s recent collaboration with AMD to bring 64-bit multicore processors for cloud servers). This makes it possible to construct more data centers over a wider area range than what’s in use today (and if companies implement AMD’s SeaMicro Freedom fabric they can connect these server farms together for even more efficiency). The ARM CEO goes on to state that even desktop PC’s could benefit from using ARM-based processors and say’s that the architecture isn’t ‘intrinsic’ (made specifically for) to smartphones and tablets alone, only that it needs to be adapted for such use (AMD thought the same way with their Llano line of APU’s). While Warren East may be correct in his thoughts of ARM-based processors being limited to mobile devices and data-farms, I wouldn’t expect to see any implementation of his companies CPUs overnight. However, his thoughts are not that far-fetched.
Cabe