Today, hugely sophisticated computers can be held in the palm of your hand.

But originally, computers

filled an entire room.

Preparing Nellie to do a day's

work has become a well-practise d routine.

Right, keys in.

Can you check this oil level please, Harry?

Oil OK.

OK, disk up to speed.

Hello, alternator house.

Disk oil and temperature OK.

Is OK your end?

Rotor, alternator on.

OK for standby.

Forty years after the first

electronic computers were developed...

Standby coming on.

Their size has decreased dramatically.

How has

computing technology advanced so rapidly?

The answer lies in the size of circuit boards,

which have rapidly become smaller and smaller.

GORDON MOORE

Gordon Moore was the co-founder

and chairman of Intel back in 1965,

when he formulated

what has come to be known as Moore's Law.

Observing how

technology had advanced up to that point,

Moore said that the number of transistors that can fit

on a circuit board would double every two years.

This increases

computational power very quickly.

In fact, each doubling of transistor density actually

quadruples the effective computational power.

Because as transistors shrink, so does the time

it takes to perform their switching operations.

So we get twice the amount of transistors in the same space,

working at twice the speed.

This also results in a lower cost per unit, as the same

computational power can be created more cheaply.

The effect has been

very noticeable in the consumer market.

For example, the development of cell phones from early

models to complex smartphones in less than 30 years

is strongly linked to Moore's Law.

As are processing speed, memory capacity, and even

the number and size of pixels in digital cameras.

Industry experts now believe we

are approaching the end of Moore's Law.

Current techniques are reaching their capacity, and the technology

required to go even smaller would cost too much.

Since 1965, much of the computing industry has set

its targets for development based on Moore's Law.

But with the technology apparently nearing its limits,

the future is harder to predict.

Moore's Law