Forty years after the publication of his law, which states that transistor density on integrated circuits doubles about every two years, Moore said this morning: "It can't continue forever. The nature of exponentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens.

"In terms of size [of transistor] you can see that we're approaching the size of atoms which is a fundamental barrier, but it'll be two or three generations before we get that far - but that's as far out as we've ever been able to see. We have another 10 to 20 years before we reach a fundamental limit. By then they'll be able to make bigger chips and have transistor budgets in the billions."

UCB Prof. John D. Kubiatowicz said in his CS162 lecture that Moore's law died in 2002. Silicon manufacturers moved from pushing clock speeds to building multi-core systems. This probably means that PC growth will slow down dramatically over the next decade. On the other hand, portable, mobile, and embedded computers, e.g. phones, that have a lot processing power headroom will spawn a large software industry.