Louise Donovan \u2014 GQ
In 1969, the United States put two men on the moon. The mission required more than 3,500 IBM employees and the most sophisticated programs ever written. Today, though, a single Apple iPhone holds more computing power than any of the technology used on Apollo 11. That rapid advance can be explained by a pattern called Moore\u2019s Law: every 18 months, the amount of transistors that it\u2019s possible to fit on to a one\u2013
inch-wide microchip doubles. In other words, the pace of change is geometric, not linear. That\u2019s why a laptop bought today is not nine times better than one you could buy nine years ago, it\u2019s 64 times better. The problem for innovators is that Moore\u2019s Law will, in around 15 years\u2019 time, hit a wall. There is a physical limit to how many transistors can be squeezed on to a chip.<\/p>\n
In the short term, the chips themselves will evolve. The so-called \u201cwonder material\u201d, graphene could replace their silicon insides. Graphene conducts electricity at high speed and it reduces interference between tightly arranged transistors.<\/p>\n