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  • Rob Landleylandley@mstdn.jp
    Aug 22, 2026, 12:43 AM

    Moore's Law is dead.

    Intel introduced the 64 bit "Core 2" processor in 2005 so laptops could access more than 4 gigabytes of RAM.

    Moore's Law's 18 month doubling time says the following 21 years should have 14 doublings to 64 terabytes of RAM in each $2000 laptop.

    That's why silicon valley execs went crazy: they no longer have free growth. Their business model doesn't WORK. They've done regulatory capture, brute force spending inflating a snake oil bubble, and nothing's working.

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Replies

  • Rob Landleylandley@mstdn.jp
    Aug 22, 2026, 12:47 AM

    I'm typing this on a laptop that came out in 2012. It was high-end then and I've upgraded it as far as it can go, but no piece of hardware that's NINE DOUBLINGS behind should still be usable, let alone slightly more powerful than a modern chromebook.

    That's why silicon valley's gone septic. Everything they did was pantomime while photolithigrapic die size shrinks did all the heavy lifting. Now the S-curve's bent back down again there's no more growth to be had, and they're in SCREAMING DENIAL.

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  • ChuckChuckMcManis@chaos.social
    Sep 30, 2026, 12:57 AM

    @landley @f4grx If something was never alive can it be dead? I don’t disagree with your general claim but it it doesn’t feel particularly useful. Silicon Valley “could” if it chose to, focus on utilization and get 100x more “done” on your 2012

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  • Rob Landleylandley@mstdn.jp
    Sep 30, 2026, 1:22 AM

    @ChuckMcManis @f4grx A) I have three dead laptops in a box.

    B) they already did. The s-curve started bending down 15 years ago, but intel hit the Pentium 4 megahertz wall and backed off in 2001.

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  • Rob Landleylandley@mstdn.jp
    Sep 30, 2026, 1:28 AM

    @ChuckMcManis @f4grx when excessive pipelining failed to soak up the transistor budget, pentium M added 4 megabytes of cpu cache, they added more execution units and went hyper-threaded then full SMP, they integrated graphics on die with framebuffer and 3D engine texture memory, all the branch prediction and speculative execution that gave us meltdown...

    All this was _after_ photolithographic die size shrinks stopped giving them free doublings.

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  • Rob Landleylandley@mstdn.jp
    Sep 30, 2026, 1:30 AM

    @ChuckMcManis @f4grx but the larger point is the chipmakers being clever covered for Microsoft and friends failing to improve matters (other than soaking up more hardware capability) since the invention of the word processor, spreadsheet, email, and web browser decades ago.

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