Moore's Law Is Dead

Do you like your iPhone? Today, you are walking with the equivalent of what was supercomputer not too long ago — in your pocket.

The foundation for the modern semiconductor industry got its start in the late 1940s and 1950s. Electronics up until then were dependent on vacuum tubes. These weren’t, to say the least, very easy to miniaturize. But we did try to use them.

In 1946, the U.S. government built the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) and contained over 17,000 vacuum tubes, along with an additional 90,000 bulky components. It was enormous. Something better was obviously needed for computers to become practical.

That began to happen in 1947 when engineers at Bell Labs invented the transistor.

These components could replace vacuum tubes. They could also be made much smaller. Things started changing fast. By 1954, Texas Instruments was selling them.

Then, in 1958, Texas Instruments engineer Jack Kilby (who would go on to win the Nobel Prize) invented a way to put multiple transistors on a single piece of material. He used a chip made out of germanium for its semiconducting properties. Some of the greatest inventions in history sure didn’t look that way at the start. In fact, at times, they were downright ugly. However, this ugly duckling was the world’s first integrated circuit:

Not long after, Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor found a better way to build an integrated circuit using a silicon chip. His invention was so important, we have geography named after it. It was the beginning of a big industry that specialized in making things smaller. And they did get smaller, regularly.

Thanks for ‘white guy’ link...

http://happyacres.tumblr.com/post/122595142549/are-white-men-gods

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