All Those Laws of Technology

Gordon Moore

In absence of any news about any key development in the world of technology in last few days, let us look back at those laws that governed minds of technocrats in last few years as they looked forward in time:

Moore's Law: The number of transistors we can fit on a chip (or semiconductor) or, effectively the CPU power, will double every 18 months. He later revised the law to 'every two years'. [Gordon Moore cofounded Intel in 1965]

Gilder's Law: Bandwidth will double every 6 months -Or, 3 times faster than CPU power. [Gearge Gilder was visionary author of "Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth will Revolutionize Our World"]

Metcalfe's Law: The usefulness, or utility, of a network equals the square of the number of users. [Robert Metcalfe was founder of 3Com Corporation and designer of the Ethernet protocol for computer networks]

Proebsting's law: Compiler research has led to a doubling in computing power every 18 years.[Todd Proebsting is the Director of the Center for Software Excellence in Microsoft's Platform and Services Division]

Hwang's Law: The density of the top-of-the-line flash memory chips will double every 12 months. [Hwang Chang-gyu is President of Samsung. More details in our past posting]