Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!ames!sgi!shinobu!odin!maddog!pkr
From: pkr@maddog.sgi.com (Phil Ronzone)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Moore's Law
Message-ID: <3793@odin.SGI.COM>
Date: 8 Feb 90 18:16:32 GMT
References: <51751@bu.edu.bu.edu> <3300099@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@odin.SGI.COM
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
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In article <3300099@m.cs.uiuc.edu> nelson@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>Something here seems a bit flaky...  If, in fact, that doubling every 10
>  months rule holds back to 1960, and we assume that there was only ONE
>  transistor then, we have 20 trans. for every person on Earth.  Now, if
>  we say that there was only ONE Burroughs 5000 (introduced in 1960), then
>  it follows that each person has the equivalent of 20 of those machines.
>  This is still not reasonable, though.  I think a figure of about
>  TEN MILLION transistors in 1960 is reasonable.  That equates to 200
>  million per person on Earth now, and that seems much too large...

I though so at first, but then:

I just read about ONE company with ONE fab line makeing ~800,000
1MB DRAMs a month. That's 800 BILLION transistors per month.

Of course, I am assumimg that "transistor" is not restricted to
discrete component transitors ...


------Me and my dyslexic keyboard----------------------------------------------
Phil Ronzone   Manager Secure UNIX           pkr@sgi.COM   {decwrl,sun}!sgi!pkr
Silicon Graphics, Inc.               "I never vote, it only encourages 'em ..."
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