Establishing Moore´s Law

The seemingly unshakeable accuracy of Moore´s law - which states that the speed of computers; as measured by the number of transistors that can be placed on a single chip, will double every year or two - has been credited with being the engine of the electronics revolution, and is regarded as the premier example of a self-fulfilling prophecy and technological trajectory in both the academic and popular press. Although many factors have kept Moore´s law as an industry benchmark, it is the entry of foreign competition that seems to have played a critical role in maintaining the pace of Moore´s law in the early VLSI transition. Many different kinds of chips used many competing logic families. DRAMs and microprocessors became critical to the semiconductor industry, yet were unknown during the original formulation of Moore´s law