Saturday, May 6th 2023
AMD's Dr. Lisa Su Thinks That Moore's Law is Still Relevant - Innovation Will Keep Legacy Going
Barron's Magazine has been on a technology industry kick this week and published their interview with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su on May 3. The interviewer asks Su about her views on Moore's Law and it becomes apparent that she remains a believer of Gordon Moore's (more than half-century old) prediction - Moore, an Intel co-founder passed away in late March. Su explains that her company's engineers will need to innovate in order to carry on with that legacy: "I would certainly say I don't think Moore's Law is dead. I think Moore's Law has slowed down. We have to do different things to continue to get that performance and that energy efficiency. We've done chiplets - that's been one big step. We've now done 3-D packaging. We think there are a number of other innovations, as well." Expertise in other areas is also key in hitting technological goals: "Software and algorithms are also quite important. I think you need all of these pieces for us to continue this performance trajectory that we've all been on."
When asked about the challenges involved in advancing CPU designs within limitations, Su responds with: "Yes. The transistor costs and the amount of improvement you're getting from density and overall energy reduction is less from each generation. But we're still moving (forward) generation to generation. We're doing plenty of work in 3 nanometer today, and we're looking beyond that to 2 nm as well. But we'll continue to use chiplets and these type of constructions to try to get around some of the Moore's Law challenges." AMD and Intel continue to hold firm with Moore's Law, even though slightly younger upstarts disagree (see NVIDIA). Dr. Lisa Su's latest thoughts stay consistent with her colleague's past statements - AMD CTO Mark Papermaster reckoned that the theory is pertinent for another six to eight years, although it could be a costly endeavor for AMD - the company believes that it cannot double transistor density every 18 to 24 months without incurring extra expenses.
Sources:
Barron's Magazine, Wccftech
When asked about the challenges involved in advancing CPU designs within limitations, Su responds with: "Yes. The transistor costs and the amount of improvement you're getting from density and overall energy reduction is less from each generation. But we're still moving (forward) generation to generation. We're doing plenty of work in 3 nanometer today, and we're looking beyond that to 2 nm as well. But we'll continue to use chiplets and these type of constructions to try to get around some of the Moore's Law challenges." AMD and Intel continue to hold firm with Moore's Law, even though slightly younger upstarts disagree (see NVIDIA). Dr. Lisa Su's latest thoughts stay consistent with her colleague's past statements - AMD CTO Mark Papermaster reckoned that the theory is pertinent for another six to eight years, although it could be a costly endeavor for AMD - the company believes that it cannot double transistor density every 18 to 24 months without incurring extra expenses.
36 Comments on AMD's Dr. Lisa Su Thinks That Moore's Law is Still Relevant - Innovation Will Keep Legacy Going
She don't want to sell. How does this affect to the progress?
The whole law is based on a time premise. That would be equivalent to saying all planets have the same gravity except objects fall faster or slower depending on the planet.
Sorry Lisa but you have no idea what you are talking about and Moore’s law was just a product roadmap timetable for the marketing department. Nothing more.
It's a theory.
Too many outliers to be a classified as a "true law".
It's a "pseudo law" excepted by the tech as a real law.
A scientific theory is knowledge about how nature works that has been exhaustively proven through experimentation. A theory becomes law when it is 100% certain that the natural phenomenon occurred or occurs in the way predicted. The timetable for burning grooves into a substrate is NOT part of this. Moore’s law is like Murphy’s law. The use of law here is just jargon.
Here are some examples of scientific laws and theories:
science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/scientific-experiments/10-scientific-laws-theories.htm
Thankfully, I don't think many here were confused on that point.
Gordon Moore was a founder of an influential company. Because of that, people listened to his thoughts and opinions. One of his opinions was that Intel could make products at a certain pace. For awhile, that was the case. Now its not. Everyone needs to stop elevating the musings of one person to some sort of fundamental, universal process.
It's the same problem that NVIDIA is facing. The Ada architecture is leaps and bounds ahead of Ampere. This is true, undisputable fact. So why are the 40 series product stack so bad? The answer isn't simple greed, I'm afraid. I'm not gonna dispute that there is some of that (there is - Jensen Huang isn't the kind of guy who will openly forfeit his cut), but their production and R&D costs went up harshly, so they had little choice in there but to dramatically increase the product's cost while simultaneously releasing high-yield, cutdown products that barely - when at all - offer an increase in performance per dollar. In fact, across many segments, it's an actual regression in that regard. For this reason, I wouldn't be surprised if the Blackwell architecture was actually a refinement of Ada focused on upkeeping performance but lowering cost throughout, then making use of configurations that would be possible with Ada but were not used due to yield and profitability concerns.
I actually feel the same way about the guy who made claims about 1% low & 0.1% lows. The guy who claims to shed light on all that was in marketing well before, he did anything like reviews.
Any stock market "law" is not the same as a natural law and everyone should know that.
Also, scientific theories are signifigantly more grounded then that of any commercial prediction. Don't give Moore's law that kind of credibility, it really shows you have no understanding of what you are saying.
Practice - 65~55% profit margins
You have the best processor in history and we still can't enjoy any ultrabook.
You have the opportunity to offer ultrabook under 2.2lb without heating up and performance for AAA gaming and we don't see it in the market and people are getting impatient.
If a scientist observes something in the environment, a hypothesis is made and a set of experiments are designed to prove the hypothesis. If the experiments generate a reproducible result then a theory might be postulated. After an exhausting number of reproducible experiments from a multitude of scientists demonstrate that the theory holds up, a law will be created.
Sorry for belaboring this point but I’m a scientist and the scientific method keeps getting abused by tech companies, tech news sites and CEOs that have lost perspective. I just wish everyone would stop calling it Moore’s law and call it something like Moore’s prediction. I’m guessing the word law was used to make it seem Intel discovered something significant rather than just come up with a general product release schedule.