As Moore’s Law Slows, Chip Specialization Could Undermine Computing Progress
For decades, the computer chips that run everything from PCs to spaceships have looked remarkably similar. But as Moore’s Law slows, industry leaders are moving towards specialized chips, which experts say threatens to undermine the economic forces fueling our rapid technological growth.
The earliest computers were often designed to carry out very specific tasks, and even if they could be reprogrammed it would often require laborious physical rewiring. But in 1945, computer scientist John von Neumann proposed a new architecture that allowed a computer to store and execute many different programs on the same underlying hardware.
The idea was rapidly adopted, and the “von Neuman architecture” has underpinned the overwhelming majority of processors made since. That’s why, despite vastly different processing speeds, the chip in your laptop and...
