IEEE Spectrum April, 2015 - 37

follow. Chip designers have just begun
exploring how to integrate microelectromechanical systems, which can be used
to make tiny accelerometers, gyroscopes,
and even relay logic. The same goes for
microfluidic sensors, which can be used
to perform biological assays and environmental tests.
All of these technologies allow you to
directly connect a digital CMOS chip with
the outside, analog world. This could have
a powerful economic effect if the new sensors and actuators can take advantage of
the low-cost, mass-production approaches
common to silicon manufacturing.
But this new phase of Moore's Law-
what I call Moore's Law 3.0 and what others in the semiconductor industry call
"more than Moore"-may not make economic sense. Integrating nonstandard
components onto a chip offers many
exciting opportunities for new products
and capabilities. What it doesn't offer is
the regular, predictable road map for
continued success.
The path forward will be much murkier. Adding a new capability to a chip
may make a company money today, but
there's no guarantee that adding another
will earn it more money tomorrow. No
doubt this transition will be painful for
some established semiconductor companies, with the winners and losers yet
to be determined.
Still, I think Moore's Law 3.0 could be
the most exciting rendition of the law yet.
Once we get past our expectations for easily quantifiable progress, we could see an
explosion of creative applications: bionic
appendages that operate seamlessly with
the body, smartphones that can sniff the
air or test the water, tiny sensors that can
power themselves from ambient energy
sources, and a host of other applications
we have yet to imagine. Moore's Law as
we know it might be coming to an end.
But its legacy will keep us moving forward for a long time to come. n
posT your CoMMenTs at http://
spectrum.ieee.org/mooreslawfifty0415

When Mead
Met Moore
DeCADes Ago, Carver Mead performed some of the earliest work aimed
at determining just how small transistors could ultimately get. A longtime
colleague of Gordon Moore, he's widely credited with popularizing the phrase
"Moore's Law." Their relationship dates all the way back to 1960-five years
before Moore's famous article in Electronics, which kicked off popular
attention to the trend. Recently, Mead told IEEE Spectrum about his poignant
first encounter with the electronics legend.
"I was a brand new assistant professor at Caltech, just in my first year, and I was
in my office working away on the results of some experiment I had done. This guy
waltzed into my office and said, 'Hi, I'm Gordon Moore from Fairchild,' " Mead says,
laughing. "Well, I had never heard of Gordon Moore, but I knew about Fairchild."
"We shook hands, and he said he was on campus to recruit some engineers,
and would I like some transistors to teach my lab course? And I said, 'Oh, that
would be absolutely great.' So he reached into the top of his briefcase, [and]
the first thing he did was pull out a sock or a dirty shirt or something.... I was
looking at him a little surprised. He turned around with this little grin on his
face and said, 'I travel light.' "
Moore went on to pull out two big 8½-by-11 manila envelopes, each
"bulging" with transistors, Mead says. One was full of devices from Fairchild's
2N697 line, one of the company's first, and the other zippy 2N706 switches.
"I had never seen so many transistors," Mead recalls. "I was completely
blown away. In those days none of us had much budget for things like that for
teaching. We were working with really cheap transistors that were about a
dollar apiece in the stock room. For a student to shell out that for [a device]
that might burn out on the first experiment was not easy. Having some
transistors that the students could work with without having to break their
budget was a great thing." It was the beginning of years of close collaboration.
-raCheL CourTLanD
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum April, 2015
