TECHNOLOGY

Technology

Technology

Illustrated Example of Moore's Law

Moore's Law

The computer chip has evolved from a simple integrated circuit to a microprocessor with millions of transistors.

The first working integrated circuit on germanium was demonstrated by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in 1958. This prototype has a transistor (small left dot) attached to two gold wires and a capacitor (middle black dot). The germanium itself, secured on a glass slide, is divided into three resistors by the tabs at the bottom. By showing that all three types of components could work in the same slice of germanium, Kilby offered a way to improve the performance and lower the cost of electronic devices.

The fluctuations from year to year, however, are strong. After falling sharply in the late 1990s, due to a concomitant fall in prices, unit values ??increased again in 2000 and 2001 thanks to the breakthrough of portable computers. Their growth has been accompanied by a marketing models more affordable entry-level, which explains the recent decline in unit value (Figure).

The success of ICT and bounces on new products or processed. Their initial price is high, while the performance is limited. Then widens the range of devices less expensive, thus greatly increasing the quantities sold. Then, lower prices and changes in functionality are successively involved, attracting new consumers and pushes the rapid turnover of these products. hanges in value of household expenditure for a given product depends on the evolution of the price of it as well as that of the volume consumed.

To calculate the price index, when a product goes, it is rarely possible in the case of ICT to make a replacement "equivalent" (that is to say, to replace an old product with a new and directly calculate the evolution of prices between the two products), because the new products on the market are much more efficient than older models, so they cannot be directly compared. The solution adopted in the price index (CPI) is charged to the new product, when introduced, a change in prices estimated by different methods. The most used is an implicit method that uses the average trend observed on all other products in the same family. Other more direct methods are used, explicitly considering the difference in quality. The difference between the evolution of prices charged and that resulting from the direct comparison between the price level of the new and the old product is the quality effect. It is positive when the replacement model is more advanced and negative when it is more simple.

By comparing household spending for the product concerned to the amount of units sold, we obtain an average unit value. Fluctuations with a unit value of the cumulative price index and the corresponding effect quality.

The average decline of ICT prices is 7.6% per year since 1995. It reached 18.6% for microcomputers. Over the same period, the average unit value of the latter fell only 5.6%. The difference, due to the quality effect, due to the long-term trend of technological ...