Gordon Moore and the Semiconductor Dark Forest

1

There is a special booth at the American Computer History Museum.

What is displayed at this booth is not a cross-era hardware or technology in computer history, but a prediction.

It's called Moore's Law, Chinese it's generally called Moore's Law.

"Moore's Law" is called a law, but it is not actually a summary of the laws of nature, but an industry expectation.

In 1965, Gordon Moore published a paper in the journal Electronics, arguing that the pace of semiconductor development is exponential, the number of transistors that can be accommodated on integrated circuits doubles every year, and the price will fall by half.

This prediction has since become a reality many times, so it is called "Moore's Law".

Contrary to the status of Moore's Law in the industry later, when Moore made this judgment public, everyone doubted whether the young man had studied mathematics.

Exponential growth, the magnitude of that transistor will soon reach a terrifying number, the first year everyone put 2 transistors on it, 20 years later it will become 1 million transistors.

Is it crazy to stuff 1 million transistors into such a small cube?

Later history proved that Moore was not ignorant of mathematics, but the public was too unimaginative about the development of electronic technology.

In 2020, the number of transistors on Apple's A14 chip was 11.8 billion.

2

Compared to his two companions, Gordon Moore's life is bland like a middle school student essay.

Gordon Moore was born in 1929 in Pescadino, north of San Francisco, and after attending school, Gordon Moore was actively involved in clubs, trying to become a school sports expert, and at most participated in four sports teams at the same time.

Fortunately, Gordon Moore is not athletic.

Realizing that continuing to engage in sports was dead, he began to study hard.

In this study, the essence of learning God could not be suppressed, and in only one year, he became the first college student in the family at the speed of making the scum cry, and entered the University of California, Berkeley.

After a few years of serious study, he received a doctorate in physical chemistry and entered Johns Hopskin University to engage in research.

Probably even he himself felt that this kind of down-to-earth rules and rules to study well and work little by little was too boring, Gordon Moore finally had a different idea after two years of working.

The eldest husband was born in heaven and earth, how can he live every day?

So when Nobel Prize winner William Shockley invited him to start a business, he decisively left and became a member of Shockley Semiconductors.

The story of Shockley and the "Fairchild Eight Rebel" is everywhere on the Internet, so I will not repeat it here.

In "Fairchild Eight Rebel", Gordon Moore is mainly responsible for research and development, which is the so-called technology master.

This technology master took the sky bubble laboratory, studied chips, and found a law without paying attention: the complex structure of semiconductors seems to grow exponentially!

So in 1965, Gordon Moore came up with "Moore's Law" by summarizing technical experience and published it in the journal Electronics.

At that time, the semiconductor industry did not realize that it was about to usher in a father.

3

If it's just a technician talking in a magazine, then even if he is right, it will not have a seismic impact on the industry.

But Gordon Moore started his own business.

Ten years after Fairchild Semiconductors was founded, Gordon Moore and his good brother Noyce ran out to go solo and set up a new company.

The company's name is Intel – Intel.

The boss has made a prediction of the industry, and the company will definitely implement this prediction.

After all, the boss pays you a salary.

Unfortunately, Intel mastered the core technology and successfully dominated the semiconductor industry.

At this moment, the entire semiconductor industry found itself with an additional law on its head.

Many people do not understand why the "Moore's Law" is a horizontal and vertical prediction that can promote the development of the semiconductor industry.

The reason is simple: because Moore has invisibly established an industry standard for everyone in the same industry.

The entire semiconductor industry is a dark forest, and everyone has to compete in this forest, but because the industry is developing too fast, everyone lacks a general understanding of the degree of technological development, and what standards to develop can only be measured in advance.

But without a unified standard, the extent to which other companies' technology has developed can only be guessed, because no one will tell the truth.

Before Moore spoke, the forest was in a state of random fluctuations.

It's possible that you feel like you've done a good job, only to be rubbed on the ground by someone else as soon as you launch the market.

It is also possible that some people suspect that others have made cross-era artifacts, desperately rolling technical stacks, and then tearing their own eggs out because of too big steps, Sony especially understands this set.

The most angry thing is that I later found out that I can win by making semi-finished products.

Even if we bring in the position of capital, we will find that it is much better not to develop than to develop.

Last year's goods were not sold out, and I vigorously eliminated my own inventory, did I drink too much and want to betray my ass?

For a nascent industry like semiconductors, they have to face a dark forest full of fighting, chaos, calculation, and destined to explore the way ahead in the collapse.

Moore's Law descended here, bringing rules to this forest.

When Moore speaks, you can do it, you can't do it, you have to consider whether others will do it.

Even if only one family takes Moore's brain door seriously, it will cause them to cause generational suppression and directly expel themselves from the market.

If you want to do this, you have to follow, you have to double your transistors to qualify for the competition.

The point is, there must be a company that takes this standard seriously.

That is Moore's control of Intel itself.

As long as Intel still takes the law drawn by its president as a golden rule, others have to follow suit, and if they can't do it, they must be worse than Intel.

If you want to compete in the semiconductor industry, you must take Moore's Law to heart, as an industry mark, a barrier to entry.

In this way, you can demand that you improve.

This is the first survival rule of this forest.

4

Unlike most business stars on the planet, Gordon Moore's biography rarely expresses the character, and even the information "stimulated to learn chemistry by a neighbor's child when I was a child" looks like a hard paste.

Most of his biography is devoted to how this man did technology.

Moore's partner Noyce is different, it is difficult for Noyce to concentrate on development, he is full of enthusiasm in the entrepreneurial stage, and after the success of his career, he enters a state of decay.

So 6 years after Intel's founding, Noyce chose to step down and give the position of president and CEO to Gordon Moore.

After Gordon Moore succeeded to the throne, he developed step by step, and gradually brought Intel to the position of giant.

Especially in the face of the challenges of the Japanese semiconductor industry, changing the track, laying out the PC market in advance, and the operation of stud CPU technology laid the foundation of today's Intel empire.

Until his retirement in 1989, Gordon Moore held Intel firmly in control.

In fact, Gordon Moore still maintained a strong work motivation after this, often saying that I can lead the team again when I get up.

But he dug a hole for himself when he founded Intel.

Probably angered by Fairchild's elder politics, Gordon Moore and Noyce set a rule at the beginning of their founding:

If there are old antiques in the company who have not died until they are 72 years old, they must be forced to retire.

Gordon Moore miscalculated, completely unaware of how capable he was as a rich man who loved sports.

So later, although he insisted on voting on corporate affairs, his vote was invalid.

It's like I'm doing myself.

In the years of leading Intel, Gordon Moore never stopped innovating, and he firmly implemented Moore's Law, making it a rule in the sky of the entire semiconductor industry.

In fact, "Moore's Law" itself is not rigorous, Moore himself has revised the time estimate of doubling semiconductor performance twice, the first time changing "doubling every year" to "doubling in two years", and the second time changing the time to 18 months.

Even today, countless people chant that Moore's Law is dead.

But no matter how lax the rules are, rules are rules, and it is better to have industry standards than no standards at all.

It is quite possible that it is precisely because of this dead line pressed here, the semiconductor industry, the development of our entire information age will proceed at such an outrageous speed.

And at this moment, Gordon Moore, a true pioneer in the semiconductor industry, left this world peacefully at home.

This old man who has been driving technological progress all his life and focusing on research and development has completed his historical mission.

Maybe Moore's Law will fail, maybe it will continue in another way, but the semiconductor industry that developed rapidly under the guidance of Moore's Law in the past, and the world that has changed dramatically through semiconductor development, already exists here.

We enjoy the fruits of development, and let's not forget the light in the dark forest of semiconductors.