> "People always talk about Moore's Law falling apart, and it seems like people didn't see it coming."
EEs in the semiconductor industry have been talking about it for the past 20 years; they didn't know exactly when it would occur but they knew it was coming. It's only software developers who were blissfully unaware.
EDIT: The interesting thing about the end of Moore's Law from AMD's (and everybody who isn't Intel) perspective is that finally the playing field is moving closer to even. Before, Intel always had the most advanced fab processes because of the vast amounts of money they funneled into it, which meant that everybody else had to have a better architecture than Intel chips just to get equal performance. Now that Intel is losing that process advantage, it should become possible for everyone to compete purely on the basis of architecture again.
EEs in the semiconductor industry have been talking about it for the past 20 years; they didn't know exactly when it would occur but they knew it was coming. It's only software developers who were blissfully unaware.
EDIT: The interesting thing about the end of Moore's Law from AMD's (and everybody who isn't Intel) perspective is that finally the playing field is moving closer to even. Before, Intel always had the most advanced fab processes because of the vast amounts of money they funneled into it, which meant that everybody else had to have a better architecture than Intel chips just to get equal performance. Now that Intel is losing that process advantage, it should become possible for everyone to compete purely on the basis of architecture again.