Moore's law is dead, long live Intel?

Over the past 40 years, computing has been led by a law that affects everything from the development of animated movies such as Finding Nemo to the speed at which traders buy and sell stocks on exchanges located thousands of miles away.

Moore's Law, set out by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, states that computing power doubles roughly every two years, and thus is increasing exponentially.

Describing the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on a circuit board, the law applies to home computers and laptops but also dictates what you can do on your mobile phone or how many megapixels your digital camera can handle.

But this cannot go on forever: one day scientists will run out of ways to (cheaply) squeeze more transistors onto processors.

Computers will stop getting faster, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as we may not actually need more speed; the software of the future may not be able to take advantage of it anyway.

The question is, when will this happen? Pat Gelsinger, Intel's chief technologist, told reporters last month that the law is good until 2029 but keeping up with its demands will be really expensive.

But it could come much sooner than that. Christian Morales, Intel's vice-president for the Sales and Marketing Group and general manager for Middle East and North Africa, told me this week that "we foresee that it will keep going for another ten years. What happens after that? We actually don't know".

This is obviously a worry for chip makers, but the death of Moore's Law does not necessarily spell the fate of companies such as Intel and its archrival AMD. Speed may be the current area of competition, but energy efficient mobile processors are becoming increasingly important in the market. It's not how fast it is, it's what you do with it that counts – this could be the new law that governs the chip industry (which is, incidentally, expected to consolidate) in the next few decades.

But it's by no means definite that Moore's Law will die. Intel's new 'multicore processors' will – according to Morales – be expanded to up to 24 cores "in the near future", and up to 80 cores "some years from now". The law (and Intel itself) is 40 years old, and could live on for another forty years – and more: "it might just carry on for another two or three decades," says Morales.

"Each year we think we're near the limit, we find a solution."