o Time : February 24, Friday 12:00 ~ 2:00 p.m.

o Venue : 9601(The 6th floor seminar room)


Are Technology Improvement Rates of Knowledge Industries following Moore’s Law? -An Empirical Study of Microprocessor, Mobile Cellular, and Genome Sequencing Technologies-

-Abstract

Many of the most critical technologies in knowledge economy are undergoing an unprecedented exponential rate of rapid improvement. The best known roadmap to guide exponential trend of improvement has been provided by Moore’s law for the semiconductor industry.

The purpose of this paper is to update the validity of Moore’s law by applying it to historical trends of transistor density in microprocessor technology. Using Moore’s law as the benchmark, then, we will examine how well the historical trends of performance improvement in speed for mobile cellular, genome sequencing, and microprocessor technologies have followed Moore’s law. We will also test whether the improvement rate have begun to slow down in recent years.

Our finding indicates that Moore’s law remains valid to explain increasing transistor density over the last 40 years. However, improvement rate of speed measure varies for each technology following its own exponential trend.

Another finding is that more recent improvement rate during the last 10 years again varies for each technology. A significant acceleration in the improvement rate for genome sequencing technology has occurred, while a marked slowdown has taken place to improvement rate of a microprocessor’s clock speed.

All of these variations, however, do not alter the fact that exponential trend indicated by Moore’s law remains valid to guide continuous improvement of these technologies, which, in turn, will shape the future of knowledge economy and society.