AMD Thinks Moore’s Law is Alive and Kicking

Despite recent claims to the contrary by rivals Intel, AMD has declared that Moore’s Law – the principle that computing power would double as processing technology shrinks – is far from dead. AMD’s Chief Technical Officer Mark Papermaster believes that Moore’s Law still applies and that anyone who thinks otherwise has too narrow a view of chip architecture. Shots fired, indeed.

“Some people have said Moore’s Law is dead, so my question to them is: so how can you do a generation leap [in chips]?” Papermaster told IT Pro during a press briefing in London. “Moore’s Law is not dead.”

“It’s not just about the transistor anymore; we can’t just have transistors improving every cycle,” he explained. “It does take semiconductor transistor improvements, but the elements that we do in design in architecture, and how we put solutions together, also keep in line [with] a Moore’s Law pace.”

Papermaster has branded this way of thinking about processor advancement as “Moore’s Law Plus.”

“Moore’s Law Plus means you stay in a Moore’s Law pace of computing improvement,” he added. “So you can keep in with a Moore’s Law cycle but you don’t rely on just semiconductor chips, you do it with a combination of other techniques.”

AMD has recently unveiled its new 7th generation APU, codenamed Bristol Ridge.