• Question: Can computers keep getting faster?

    Asked by St Cyres Wales to Ceri, Marikka, Matt, Rob, Sally on 14 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Sally Cutler

      Sally Cutler answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      I hope so as mine is pretty rubbish!

    • Photo: Ceri Dare

      Ceri Dare answered on 15 Nov 2014:

      In the past, computers have got faster by making the parts smaller and smaller, fitting as many processors on a chip as possible. When I was at primary school, I helped my Dad build his own computers and soldered bits together myself – but that wouldn’t work with today’s tiny chips in smartphones.

      Eventually then we will hit a limit when we can’t make parts smaller, because of the size of atoms. Some people are working on really new ideas, like quantum computing. Read more here: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/421186/why-cpus-arent-getting-any-faster/

    • Photo: Robert Hampson

      Robert Hampson answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      There is an observation made in 1965 called “Moore’s Law” by Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel. The observation was that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit double roughly every two years. This has proved true from 1965 until the present day. Although the period is often closer to 18 months. This dramatically improves the speed for any given chip size.

      This law has also been kind of self fulfilling as many technologies used it as an aim for their R&D divisions. Many experts predict that the rate of doubling has either already begun to slow or will do by 2020. However, this will just slow down the improvement, computers will still be getting twice as fast every 3 or 4 years.

      This is unlikely to continue forever though, there are likely to be physical limits to computing power. Currently no one knows what these limits are.

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