Moore’s Law at 50

Here’s a figure showing the trends of semiconductor output and price over time. Notice that both axes are measured as logarithmic scales: that is, they rise by powers of 10. The price of a transistor was more than a dollar back in the 1950s, and now it’s a billionth of a penny.

• Moore’s Law at 50 – the driving force behind information and communications technology has been Moore’s law, which can understood as the proposition that the number of components packed on to a computer chip would double every two years, implying a sharp fall in the costs and rise in the capabilities of information technology. But the capability of making transistors ever-smaller, at least with current technology, is beginning to run into physical limits. IEEE Spectrum has published a “Special Report: 50 Years of Moore’s Law,” with a selection of a dozen short articles looking back at Moore’s original formulation of the law, how it has developed over time, and prospects for the law continuing.
• An economic future that may never brighten – Martin Wolf on how the decline in potential growth leads to debate about the savings glut and secular stagnation

• Is Your Job ‘Routine’? If So, It’s Probably Disappearing – The American labor market and middle class was once built on the routine job–workers showed up at factories and offices, took their places on the assembly line or the paper-pushing chain, did the same task over and over, and then went home. New research from Henry Siu at the University of British Columbia and Nir Jaimovich from Duke University shows just how much the world of routine work has collapsed. The economists released a paper today, published by the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, showing that over the course of the last two recessions and recoveries, a period beginning in 2001, the economy’s job growth has come entirely from nonroutine work.
• The Cost of Trout Fishing – If we continue to ignore the impact of hatchery fish on aquatic ecosystems, we will soon regret what has been lost.
• Can the Greens keep the bastards honest? – The Greens have continually defied predictions they will go the way of the Australian Democrats, but they do face some challenges to the slow gains they’ve made over the decades, writes Mike Steketee.

• ‘Game of Thrones’ Ratings: HBO Show Returns With Series High – Once considered something of a niche show, “Thrones” is now delivering numbers topped on cable only by AMC’s “The Walking Dead.” Nielsen estimates than an average audience of about 8 million watched the initial telecast of “Game of Thrones” on Sunday — up 1.16 million viewers (or 17%) from its year-ago debut of 6.84 million. It’s also about 800,000 more than any other episode of the show to date.