As Moore's Law slows, open hardware rises
Jessica MacNeil, EDN
April 04, 2014
At 8-years old, Andrew “Bunnie” Huang appreciated the fact that his Apple II came with schematics and source code because it allowed him to figure out how it worked.
“I was wondering what all these little black things on the board were and I would take the chips out and put them in backwards, even though my dad told me not to,” said Huang during his EE Live! 2014 keynote on open-source hardware and the future of embedded systems. “He was right; you don’t put the chips in backwards.”
Today that information is guarded and protected in the hardware industry and Huang, now a research affiliate at MIT who holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the school, realized this change wasn’t because hardware became too complex, but because it was too easy to improve, and Moore’s Law was tough to keep up with.
If Moore’s Law saw technology doubled every 18 months, that meant someone working on a linear improvement, like optimizing a process node, could be getting 80% performance improvement per year, and Moore’s Law would be shipping something better by year two.
“So the problem has been that sitting and waiting has actually been a viable strategy versus innovation,” said Huang. “This problem is particularly acute in hardware.”
E-mail This Article | Printer-Friendly Page |
Related News
Breaking News
- Credo at TSMC 2024 North America Technology Symposium
- Cadence Reports First Quarter 2024 Financial Results
- Rambus Advances AI 2.0 with GDDR7 Memory Controller IP
- Faraday Reports First Quarter 2024 Results
- RAAAM Memory Technologies Closes $4M Seed Round to Commercialize Super Cost Effective On-Chip Memory Solutions
Most Popular
- Huawei Mate 60 Pro processor made on SMIC 7nm N+2 process
- Silicon Creations Reaches Milestone of 10 Million Wafers in Production with TSMC
- GUC provides 3DIC ASIC total service package to AI/HPC/Networking customers
- Analog Bits to Demonstrate Numerous Test Chips Including Portfolio of Power Management and Embedded Clocking and High Accuracy Sensor IP in TSMC N3P Process at TSMC 2024 North America Technology Symposium
- Alphawave Semi: FY 2023 and 2024 YTD Trading Update and Notice of Results