Chapter 3 – Moore’s Law is Unconstitutional!

Chapter 3 – Moore’s Law is Unconstitutional!
by Wally Rhines on 07-26-2019 at 6:00 am

(Adapted from a presentation first given under this title in 1989 and subsequently expanded in presentations over a period of nearly thirty years)

In 1965, Gordon Moore, then R&D Manager for Fairchild Semiconductor, published a paper in “Electronics” magazine predicting the trend for semiconductors in the next ten years. … Read More


Chapter 2 – Constants of the Semiconductor Industry

Chapter 2 – Constants of the Semiconductor Industry
by Wally Rhines on 07-19-2019 at 6:00 am

In the mid 1980’s, Tommy George, then President of Motorola’s Semiconductor Sector, pointed out to me that the semiconductor revenue per unit area had been a constant throughout the history of the industry including the period when germanium transistors made up a large share of semiconductor revenue.  I began tracking the numbers… Read More


Chapter 1 – Predicting Trends in the Semiconductor Industry

Chapter 1 – Predicting Trends in the Semiconductor Industry
by Wally Rhines on 07-05-2019 at 6:00 am

Figure 1 is the most basic of all the predictable parameters of the semiconductor industry, even more so than Moore’s Law.  It is the learning curve for the transistor.  Since 1954, the revenue per transistor (and presumably the cost per transistor, if we had the data from the manufacturers) has followed a highly predictable learning… Read More