Edit Proposal: Milestone-Proposal:Moore's Law - Predicts Integrated Circuit Complexity Growth, 1965

Thank you for proposing a technical achievement for possible recognition as an IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing. Your efforts help preserve the heritage of technology. Detailed information on the Milestone application process may be found at: Milestone Guidelines and How to Propose a Milestone. At least one of the proposer(s) must be an IEEE Member (including Student Member) in good standing.

To the proposer’s knowledge, is this achievement subject to litigation? If the answer is "yes", the proposal cannot proceed further. Yes No

You must be able to answer "yes" to all of the following questions. If the answer to any of the following questions is "no", the proposal cannot proceed further.

Contact us at ieee-history@ieee.org if you are unable to answer "yes" to all of the following and would still like to proceed.

Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old? Yes No

Is the achievement you are proposing within IEEE’s designated fields as defined by IEEE Bylaw I-104.11, namely: Engineering, Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Physical Sciences, Biological and Medical Sciences, Mathematics, Technical Communications, Education, Management, and Law and Policy. Yes No

Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity? Yes No

Was it of at least regional importance? Yes No

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to pay for the milestone plaque(s)? Yes No

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony? Yes No

Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? Yes No

Has the owner of the site given permission to place an IEEE plaque? Yes No

Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred:

Title of the proposed milestone. (Include date or date range in title. Example: “Alternating Current Electrification, 1886”)

Please provide a plaque citation in English summarizing the achievement and its significance. Text absolutely limited by plaque dimensions to 70 words; 60 is preferable for aesthetic reasons. NOTE: The IEEE History Committee shall have final determination on the wording of the citation. Names of living persons are not normally used in citations. Exceptions to this are cases where the person's name is linked to the achievement itself (e.g. the Lempel-Ziv algorithm, Maxwell's Equations, etc.) or where the person's name is so widely recognizeable to the general public that it makes sense to use it. When used, the names should be the names of the engineers, scientists, or technologists who actually made the achievement, rather than managers or executives. For more information and suggestions about writing milestone citations, please visit Helpful Hints on Citations, Plaque Locations.

Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Fairchild and Intel, began his work in silicon microelectronics at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1956. His 1965 prediction at Fairchild Semiconductor, subsequently known as "Moore’s Law,” that the number of components on an integrated circuit will increase exponentially with time while cost per function decreases, guided the industry's contributions to advances in electronics and computing for more than fifty years.

In what IEEE section(s) will the milestone plaque(s) reside?

Please specify the IEEE Organizational Unit(s) which have agreed to sponsor the Milestone, and supply name and contact information for the senior officer from those OU(s). Sponsorship has three aspects: 1) Payment for the cost of the plaque(s), 2) Arranging the dedication ceremony, and 3) agreeing to monitor the plaque and to let IEEE History Center staff know in case the plaque needs to be moved, is no longer secure, etc. Number 3 must be done by the IEEE Section(s) in which the plaque(s) is located, but aspects 1 and 2 can be done by any IEEE Organizational Unit, and they need not be the same one. Please note: your email address and contact information will be masked on the website for privacy reasons. Only IEEE History Center Staff will be able to view the email address.

Street address(es) and GPS coordinates of the intended milestone plaque site(s). Please include coordinates in decimal format rather than degrees.

What is the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s) relation to the achievement? The intended site(s) must have a direct connection with the achievement (e.g. where developed, invented, tested, demonstrated, installed, or operated, etc.). A museum where a device or example of the technology is displayed, or the university where the inventor studied, are not, in themselves, sufficient connection for a milestone plaque.

Also, please Describe briefly the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s). (e.g. Is it corporate buildings? Historic Site? Residential? Are there other historical markers already at the site?)

Are the original buildings extant?

Please provide the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc.

How is the intended plaque site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public? If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give details as well as the contact information visitors will need in order to arrange to visit the plaque.

Who is the present owner of the site(s)?

In the space below, please describe in detail:

• the historic significance of the achievement,
• its importance to the evolution of electrical and computer engineering and science,
• its importance to regional/national/international development,
• its benefits to humanity,
• the ways the achievement was a significant advance rather than an incremental

improvement of existing technology.

The material submitted here will constitute the main descriptive article on the ETHW website for readers to learn about the milestone. Space is unlimited, and detail is encouraged. Most milestones require 1000 to 1500 words of support, however there is no word limit. The article should be readable by a wide audience that includes practicing engineers, scholars of history, and the general public. Some examples of the text of good milestone articles are First Radio Astronomical Observations Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry] and G3_Facsimile International Standardization of G3 Facsimile (Do not worry about the formatting of the page, IEEE History Center Staff will do that afterwards.)

What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)?

On April 19, 1965, Electronics magazine published an article by Gordon E. Moore, Director of the Fairchild Semiconductor Research and Development Laboratories in Palo Alto, CA that projected the growth in the complexity of integrated circuits (ICs), popularly called microchips, or computer chips, over the next ten years. Written to encourage his company’s customers to adopt the most advanced technology in their new computer designs, his prediction emerged as a self-fulfilling prophecy that informed the actions and goals of industry technologists and executives worldwide. Under the title “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits,” Moore predicted “the development of integrated electronics for perhaps the next ten years.” [1] He plotted a graph of the maximum number of components that Fairchild technologists had been able to squeeze onto a silicon computer chip at minimum cost per component since the development of the company’s groundbreaking planar manufacturing process in 1959 until 1965. Drawing a line through just five data points he projected that “with unit cost falling as the number of components per circuit rises, by 1975 economics may dictate squeezing as many as 65,000 components on a single silicon chip.” This represented a doubling every 12 months. At the 1975 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting, Moore, by now co-founder responsible for R&D at Intel Corporation, noted that advances in photolithography, wafer size, process technology, and “circuit and device cleverness,” had allowed his projection to be realized. On adding subsequent products to his original handful of simple logic ICs, notably important new devices such as microprocessors and memories, Moore modified the trend and reduced his estimate of the future rate of increase in complexity to “a doubling every two years, rather than every year.” [2] After Caltech electrical engineering professor Carver Mead dubbed this projection “Moore’s Law,’” industry technologists and managers were challenged with delivering annual breakthroughs in optics, materials science, methods of wafer processing, circuit design techniques, software, manufacturing and test equipment, and management of complex industrial operations to ensure compliance with its projections. On reviewing the status of the industry again in 1995 (at which time an Intel Pentium microprocessor held nearly 5 million transistors) Moore concluded that “The current prediction is that this is not going to stop soon.” [3] By 2010, commercial microprocessors from AMD, Intel, and other vendors comprised over 1 billion transistors representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in excess of 40 percent per year. On the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law in 2015, Intel Corporation published a report developed by business information provider IHS that found that Moore’s Law has played a critical role in generating a minimum estimated $3 trillion in incremental GDP over the past 20 years. The report” highlighted the profound economic, technological and societal impact of Moore’s Law and how its exponential nature may have even greater implications for the future. [4] The impact and benefits of the “Law” are evident on the economy, society and the technological universe. Improved computing performance at ever-decreasing cost enhanced existing industries and increased productivity, but also spawned whole new industries. Inexpensive, ubiquitous computing fundamentally changed the way society works, plays, communicates and lives. The foundational force of Moore’s Law has driven breakthroughs in urban design, transportation, healthcare, education, and energy production. [1] Moore, Gordon E. “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits,” Electronics, McGraw Hill, Inc. Vol. 38, No.8 (April 19, 1965) [2] Moore, Gordon. “Progress in Digital Integrated Electronics” IEEE, IEDM Tech Digest (1975) pp.11-13. [3] Moore, Gordon. “Lithography and the Future of Moore’s Law,” Proceedings of SPIE, Vol. 2437 (May 1995) [4] Ford, Dale. “Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Moore's Law” IHS Inc. (2015)

What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?

None

What features set this work apart from similar achievements?

While many technologists have offered predictions on future progress in microelectronics over the years, none have achieved the widespread and sustained impact of Moore’s Law. A significant factor behind this success has been the author’s leading role as a founder of Intel in directing the technical and financial resources and corporate strategies essential to its success. Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson has described a figure illustrating the 1965 article as “the most important graph in human history.” [1] The San Jose Mercury News noted that "Since its inception over 50 years ago, today, Moore's Law has been a safe bet - it is the open immutable rule that drives Silicon Valley." [2] Similar trends in other areas of technology, from areal density in magnetic data storage to speed improvements in 3D printing have been described as "following Moore's Law." [1] Jurvetson, Steve. “Transcending Moore's Law to Forge the Future,” Computer History Museum, CORE, 2015 pp. 36-39 [2] Carey, Pete. “Silicon Valley marks 50 years of Moore's Law,” San Jose Mercury News (April 19, 2015)

Supporting texts and citations to establish the dates, location, and importance of the achievement. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. Minimum of five (5), but as many as needed to support the milestone, such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or chapters in scholarly books. At least one of the references must be from a scholarly book or journal article. 'Scholarly' is defined as peer-reviewed, with references, and published. The full reference, in English, must be uploaded, not just the citation. See below section for details on uploading material to the website. All supporting materials must be in English, or accompanied by an English translation.

Arnold Thackray, David Brock and Rachel Jones "Moore's Law", Basic Books, 2015 - all 508 pages "Gordon Moore's Vision, Doubling Down," San Jose Mercury News, April 19, 2015, p A1 and A13 Gordon More, "Cramming more components onto integrated circuits." Electronics, Volume 38, Number 8, April 19, 1965, "IBM Back On Track with Moore's Law," Science; July 2015, vol 349, issue 6245: p 220 Computer History Museum, CORE, 2015, Walter Isaacson, "Moore's Law @ 50," p 24-29 Computer History Museum, CORE, 2015, David Brock, "How Moore's Law Came to Be," p 30-33 Computer History Museum, CORE, 2015, Stevan Levy, "How Understanding Moore's Law Made Goggle Possible," p 34-35 Computer History Museum, CORE, 2015, Steve Jurvetson, "Transcending Moore's to Forge the Future," p 36-39 Dale Ford, "Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Moore's Law," IHS Technology Moore, Gordon. “Progress in Digital Integrated Electronics” IEEE, IEDM Tech Digest (1975) pp.11-13. Moore, Gordon. “Lithography and the Future of Moore’s Law,” Proceedings of SPIE, Vol. 2437 (May 1995) Schlender, Brent “Intel’s $10 billion gamble,” Fortune (November 11, 2002) Moore, Gordon E. “No Exponential Is Forever: but ‘Forever’ Can Be Delayed!” Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2003. Digest of Technical Papers. ISSCC. 2003 IEEE International (February 13, 2003) pp: 20-21. Packy, Kelly “Moore’s Law Chips Confidence” E.E. Times (2.11.15) Hachman, Mark “Intel: Moore’s Law will continue through 7nm chips” PC World (Feb22, 2015) "The Long Good- bye," IEEE Spectrum, April 2015 , p 29 Mack, Chris, "The Multiple Lives of Moore's Law," IEEE Spectrum, April 2015 , p 30-33 Hutcheson, Dan, "Transistors by the Numbers," IEEE Spectrum, April 2015 , p 33-37 Koomey, Joathan, and Naffzuger, Samuel, "Efficiency's Brief Reprieve," IEEE Spectrum, April 2015 , p 35 Courtland, Rachael, "When Mead Met Moore," IEEE Spectrum, April 2015 , p 37 "The Law That's Not A Law, Conversation with Gordon Moore," IEEE Spectrum, April 2015 , p 38-40 Huang, Andrew, "Moore's Law is Dying (and That Could Be Good)," IEEE Spectrum, April 2015 , p 42-45

Supporting materials (supported formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC) which can be made publicly available on the IEEE History Center’s website (i.e. unencumbered by copyright, or with the copyright holder’s permission). All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. Images and photographs are especially appreciated, however, it is necessary that you list the copyright owner for these and obtain the copyright owner’s permission to reuse. For documents that are copyright-encumbered, or which you do not have rights to post, email the documents themselves to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please see the Milestone Program Guidelines for more information.

To add attachments, first upload the file and add by adding the text:

[[Media:(filename)]]

For example, if the file you uploaded was named "Milestone Reference.pdf", include the text:

[[Media:Milestone Reference.pdf]] 

in the appropriate field.

Original Article [[Media:Moore_1965_Electronics_Article.pdf]] Revised projection [[Media:Moore_1975_IEEE_Speech.pdf]] Moore's Law at 50: https://vimeo.com/123452018 Gordon Moore: https://vimeo.com/70293585 [[Media:Moore's Law plot for MPUs (Linear version).jpg]] [[Media:Moore's Law plot for MPUs (Log_Linear version).jpg]]

Please email a jpeg or PDF a letter in English, or with English translation, from the site owner(s) giving permission to place IEEE milestone plaque on the property, and a letter (or forwarded email) from the appropriate Section Chair supporting the Milestone application to ieee-history@ieee.org with the subject line "Attention: Milestone Administrator." Note that there are multiple texts of the letter depending on whether an IEEE organizational unit other than the section will be paying for the plaque(s).

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