Moore’s Law Desperately Seeks Successor

Spiralling electricity consumption driven by ever increasing numbers of processors in the new chipsets and computing infrastructure is threatening to put a handbrake on affordable computing muscle unless lower power alternatives are developed quickly.

That is the collective take from many of Australia’s top electronics researchers, who in June launched an ambitious new R&D initiative to arrest what many fear could become a big power blowout caused by the atomic limits of traditional processors.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre for Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET) at Monash University aims to address the inevitable decline of Moore’s Law and the propensity to replace miniaturisation horsepower with raw power.

It is no small task either, with seven Australian universities and 13 science organisations collaborating on the project which has received more than $42.5 million in funding from the contributing organisations and the ARC, as well as $25.5 million of in-kind commitments.

FLEET estimates the world’s computing consumption sucks down between five and eight percent of global electrical output.

FLEET also warns that each smartphone is now responsible for using more energy than a household fridge thanks to the growing reliance on cloud and data centre computing!

See:   https://www.fleet.org.au/  Centre for Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies