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SAN FRANCISCO — On April 19, 1965, just over 50 years ago, Gordon Moore, then the head of research for Fairchild Semiconductor and later one of the co-founders of Intel, was asked by Electronics Magazine to submit an article predicting what was going to happen to integrated circuits, the heart of computing, in the next 10 years. Studying the trend he’d seen in the previous few years, Moore predicted that every year we’d double the number of transistors that could fit on a single chip of silicon so you’d get twice as much computing power for only slightly more money. When that came true, in 1975, he modified his prediction to a doubling roughly every two years. “Moore’s Law” has essentially held up ever since — and, despite the skeptics, keeps chugging along, making it probably the most remarkable example ever of sustained exponential growth of a technology.
旧金山——就在50年前的1965年4月19日，《电子杂志》(Electronics Magazine)请当时担任仙童半导体公司(Fairchild Semiconductor)研发负责人、后来成为英特尔(Intel)联合创始人的戈登·摩尔(Gordon Moore)写一篇文章，预测在接下来的10年里，作为计算核心的集成电路将会经历什么样的发展。在对之前几年看到的趋势进行了研究后，摩尔预言，单个硅片上安放的晶体管数每年都会增加一倍，因此只需稍微多花点钱，就能获得翻倍的计算能力。当这一点在1975年成为现实后，摩尔将自己的预测改为大致每两年增加一倍。此后，“摩尔定律”(Moore’s Law)基本上一直得到应验，而且尽管遭到了一些质疑，它仍在不断推进。该定律因而可能是有史以来反映一项技术持续呈指数增长最著名的例子。
For the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law, I interviewed Moore, now 86, at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, at a celebration in his honor co-hosted by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Intel. I asked him what he’d learned most from Moore’s Law having lasted this long.
在摩尔定律诞生50周年之际，我在旧金山探索博物馆(Exploratorium)采访了现已86岁高龄的摩尔。那是一场为摩尔举办的庆祝活动，由戈登与贝蒂·摩尔基金会(Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation)同英特尔联合举办。我问他，摩尔定律的有效性持续了这么长时间，他最大的收获是什么。
“I guess one thing I’ve learned is once you’ve made a successful prediction, avoid making another one,” Moore said. “I’ve avoided opportunities to predict the next 10 or 50 years.”
“我想，我学到的一条是，一旦预测成功了，就要避免再做预测，”摩尔说。“我回避了预测接下来10年或50年会是什么情况的各种机会。”
But was he surprised by how long it has been proved basically correct?
但在这么长时间里，摩尔定律都被证明基本正确，他觉得意外吗？
“Oh, I’m amazed,” he said. “The original prediction was to look at 10 years, which I thought was a stretch. This was going from about 60 elements on an integrated circuit to 60,000 — a thousandfold extrapolation over 10 years. I thought that was pretty wild. The fact that something similar is going on for 50 years is truly amazing. You know, there were all kinds of barriers we could always see that [were] going to prevent taking the next step, and somehow or other, as we got closer, the engineers had figured out ways around these. But someday it has to stop. No exponential like this goes on forever.”
“啊呀，我挺吃惊的，”他说。“最初是预测未来10年的情况，这我都以为是有所发挥了。也就是说，一个集成电路上的晶体管会从大约60个增加到6万个——在10年时间里提升到之前的1000倍。我以为这已经很疯狂了。类似的情形持续了50年，确实不可思议。你知道，我们总能发现，会有各种障碍阻止我们进入下一阶段，可莫名其妙地，当我们越来越接近障碍时，工程师又找到了避开它们的办法。但总有一天得停下来。像这样的指数增长不会永远持续下去。”
But what an exponential it’s been. In introducing the evening, Intel’s C.E.O., Brian Krzanich summarized where Moore’s Law has taken us. If you took Intel’s first generation microchip, the 1971 4004, and the latest chip Intel has on the market today, the fifth-generation Core i5 processor, he said, you can see the power of Moore’s Law at work: Intel’s latest chip offers 3,500 times more performance, is 90,000 times more energy efficient and about 60,000 times lower cost.
然而，这是一种多么惊人的指数增长啊。在主持当晚的活动时，英特尔首席执行官科再奇(Brian Krzanich)对摩尔定律对我们的影响行了总结。他说，看看英特尔的1971年发布第一代微芯片4004和目前市场上的最新一代英特尔芯片，也就是第五代酷睿i5(Core i5)处理器，就能看到摩尔定律的力量：最新一代芯片的性能提高了3500倍，能耗是原来的九万分之一，成本降至先前的六万分之一。
To put that another way, Krzanich said Intel engineers did a rough calculation of what would happen had a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle improved at the same rate as microchips did under Moore’s Law: “Here are the numbers: [Today] you would be able to go with that car 300,000 miles per hour. You would get two million miles per gallon of gas, and all that for the mere cost of 4 cents! Now, you’d still be stuck on the [Highway] 101 getting here tonight, but, boy, in every opening you’d be going 300,000 miles an hour!”
换个角度来看呢？科再奇表示，英特尔的工程师进行了大致的计算，如果按照摩尔定律下微芯片的发展速度，1971年推出的一款大众甲壳虫(Volkswagen Beetle)汽车的性能会有怎样的改进：“数据如下：（现在）这款车能开到每小时30万英里（约合48万公里）。1加仑汽油（约合4升）可以跑200万英里，而且只要花4分钱！时下，虽然今晚你可能还是会在赶来这里的途中堵在101公路上，但天哪，只要能动，你们可是会开到30万英里的时速呢！”
What is most striking in Moore’s 1965 article is how many predictions he got right about what these steadily improving microchips would enable. The article, entitled “Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits,” argued that: “Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers — or at least terminals connected to a central computer — automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment. The electronic wristwatch needs only a display to be feasible today. ... In telephone communications, integrated circuits in digital filters will separate channels on multiplex equipment. [They] will also switch telephone circuits and perform data processing.”
摩尔1965年的那篇文章中最令人吃惊的是，他对这些稳步改善的微芯片所能带来的变化所做的许多预测都是准确的。题为《让集成电路填满更多元件》(Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits)的这篇文章称：“集成电路将催生奇迹，比如家用电脑——或者至少是与中央计算机相连的终端——汽车自动控制和个人便携式通信设备。如今电子手表只需要一个显示屏就可以了……电话通信领域，数字滤波器中的集成电路将在多路传输设备上有单独的通道。[它们]还将转换电话线路，进行数据处理。”
Moore pretty much anticipated the personal computer, the cellphone, self-driving cars, the iPad, Big Data and the Apple Watch. How did he do that? (The only thing he missed, I jokingly told him, was “microwave popcorn.”)
基本上，摩尔这是预言了个人电脑、手机、自动驾驶汽车、iPad、大数据和Apple Watch的出现。他是怎么做到的？（我跟摩尔开玩笑，他唯一漏掉的就是“微波炉爆米花”了。）
“Well,” said Moore, “I had been looking at integrated circuits — [they] were really new at that time, only a few years old — and they were very expensive. There was a lot of argument as to why they would never be cheap, and I was beginning to see, from my position as head of a laboratory, that the technology was going to go in the direction where we would get more and more stuff on a chip and it would make electronics less expensive. ... I had no idea it was going to turn out to be a relatively precise prediction, but I knew the general trend was in that direction and had to give some kind of a reason why it was important to lower the cost of electronics.”
“这个嘛，”摩尔回答，“我一直在研究集成电路——[它们]当时还是新生事物，刚出现没几年——而且非常昂贵。有很多观点认为，它们永远都不会便宜下来。从一名实验室负责人的角度，我开始发现，这种技术未来的方向是，一枚芯片上会容纳越来越多的东西，而这会让电子产品变得更便宜……我不知道这会是一个比较准确的预测，但我知道大体趋势是这样，而它一定会提供降低电子产品成本的某种理由。”
Can it continue? Every year someone predicts the demise of Moore’s Law, and they’re wrong. With enough good engineers working on it, he hoped, “we won’t hit a dead end. ... It’s [a] unique technology. I can’t see anything really comparable that has gone on for this long a period of time with exponential growth.”
这样的趋势还会继续吗？每年都有人预测摩尔定律将被打破，但他们都错了。摩尔希望，凭借着足够多的优秀工程师的努力，“我们不会走投无路……这是[一项]独特的技术。我没有发现任何能与之类比的技术可以持续这么长时间的指数增长。”
But let’s remember that it was enabled by a group of remarkable scientists and engineers, in an America that did not just brag about being exceptional, but invested in the infrastructure and basic scientific research, and set the audacious goals, to make it so. If we want to create more Moore’s Law-like technologies, we need to invest in the building blocks that produced that America.
不过，别忘了它是靠一批杰出的科学家和工程师来实现的，而那时的美国也不会只知道炫耀自己的卓越，而是会投资于基础设施和基础科学研究，设置大胆的目标，使之成为现实。如果我们想要创造更多符合摩尔定律的技术，我们就需要投资于成就了当时的美国的基本要素。
Alas today our government is not investing in basic research the way it did when the likes of Moore and Robert Noyce, the co-inventor of the integrated circuit and the other co-founder of Intel, were coming of age.
可惜啊，今天的政府不像摩尔和罗伯特·诺伊斯(Robert Noyce)成长的时代那样投资基础科学研究了。诺伊斯是集成电路的联合发明人，与摩尔一起创立了英特尔。
“I’m disappointed that the federal government seems to be decreasing its support of basic research,” said Moore. “That’s really where these ideas get started. They take a long time to germinate, but eventually they lead to some marvelous advances. Certainly, our whole industry came out of some of the early understanding of the quantum mechanics of some of the materials. I look at what’s happening in the biological area, which is the result of looking more detailed at the way life works, looking at the structure of the genes and one thing and another. These are all practical applications that are coming out of some very fundamental research, and our position in the world of fundamental science has deteriorated pretty badly. There are several other countries that are spending a significantly higher percentage of their G.N.P. than we are on basic science or on science, and ours is becoming less and less basic.”
“让我感到失望的是，联邦政府似乎在减少对基础科研的支持，”摩尔说。“基础科研真的是这些想法诞生的地方。它们需要很长时间来孕育，但最终会促成惊人的进步。要知道，我们整个行业都来自于对一些材料的量子力学的早期认识。我观察了一下生物领域目前的发展，也是来自对生命的原理和基因的结构等一系列问题的细致研究。这些都是一些非常基础的研究带来的实际应用，而我们在基础科学领域的地位在严重下滑。其他一些国家在基础科学或大的科学领域上的投入与国民生产总值的比值，要远远高于我们，而我们的研究越来越脱离基础科学。”
How did he first get interested in science, I asked?
我问他，一开始是怎么对科学产生兴趣的？
“My neighbor got a chemistry set and we could make explosives,” he said. “In those days, chemistry sets had some really neat things in them, and I decided about then I wanted to be a chemist not knowing quite what they did, and I continued my work in a home laboratory for some period of time. Got to the point where I was turning out nitroglycerin in small production quantities and turning it to dynamite. ... A couple ounces of dynamite makes a marvelous firecracker. That really got my early interest in it. You couldn’t duplicate that today, but there are other opportunities. You know, I look at what some of my grandkids are doing, for example, those robotics and the like. These are spectacular. They’re really making a lot of progress.”
“我的邻居有一套简易化学实验玩具，我们可以做炸药，”他说。“那个时候的实验玩具里有很棒的东西，我大概就是当时决定要当一名化学家，虽然并不知道化学家究竟是做什么的。我后来在家庭实验室里继续倒腾，做了一段时间。然后我就可以少量地生产硝化甘油了，把它们变成炸药……几盎司的炸药就能做成一个很棒的鞭炮。这真的让我早早对它产生了兴趣。你不可能在今天复制这一切，但现在有其他的机会。比如，我看到孙辈在鼓捣机器人之类的东西。这些都很棒。他们的确取得了不少进步。”
Looking back on Moore’s Law and the power of computing that it has driven, I asked Moore what he thought was its most important contribution over the past 50 years.
我问摩尔，回过头来看摩尔定律以及受它驱动的计算能力，他本人认为它在过去50年里的最大贡献是什么？
“Wow!” he said. “You know, just the proliferation of computing power. We’ve just seen the beginning of what computers are going to do for us.”
“哇！”他说。“这个，就是计算能力的爆炸性增长。关于计算机会为我们做什么，我们目前看到的不过是个开头。”
How so?
何以见得？
“Oh, I think incrementally we see them taking over opportunities that we tried to do without them before and were not successful,” he added. “It’s kind of the evolution into the machine intelligence, if you wish, and this is not happening in one step. To me, it’s happening in a whole bunch of increments. I never thought I’d see autonomous automobiles driving on the freeways. It wasn’t many years ago [they] put out a request to see who could build a car that could go across the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas from a place in Southern California, and several engineering teams across the country set out to do this. Nobody got more than about 300 yards before there was a problem. Two years later, they made the full 25-mile trip across this desert track, and which I thought was a huge achievement, and from that it was just a blink before they were driving on the freeways. I think we’re going to see incremental advances like that in a variety of other areas.”
“恩，我想我们会逐渐看到，以前没有计算机时我们试图去抓住但却没能成功的一些机会，现在正被计算机拿去实现，”他补充道。“有点像是逐渐演化出机器智能，如果你希望如此的话；而这个过程并非一蹴而就。在我看来，它是一大堆进步的累积。我以前从没想过会在高速公路上见到无人驾驶汽车。就在没多少年前，[他们]发出征集令，看谁能造出一辆无人驾驶汽车，让它从加州南部出发，穿过莫哈维沙漠，抵达拉斯维加斯。来自全国各地的几个工程师团队开始着手做这件事。起初，没有哪个团队的车子能开出300码不出问题。两年后，车子就可以在沙漠里整整行驶25英里。我当时认为那是巨大的进步。再一眨眼，它们已经在高速公路上穿行了。我认为，我们会在其他各种领域看到这类日积月累的进步。”
Did he worry, I asked Moore, whose own microprocessors seemed as sharp as ever, that machines would really start to replace both white-collar and blue-collar labor at a scale that could mean the end of work for a lot of people?
摩尔的思维看起来与昔日一样敏捷。我问他，是否担心，机器真的开始大规模取代蓝领和白领劳动者，致使一大批人失去工作？
“Don’t blame me!” he exclaimed! “I think it’s likely we’re going to continue to see that. You know, for several years, I have said we’re a two-class society separated by education. I think we’re seeing the proof of some of that now.”
“别怪我！”他大声说道。“我想，我们可能会持续看到这种现象。你知道，我们的社会以教育程度为界分成两个阶层，这话我已经说了好几年。我想，我们现在看到了这方面的一些证据。”
When was the moment he came home and said to his wife, Betty, “Honey, they’ve named a law after me?”
他第一次回到家告诉妻子贝蒂，“亲爱的，他们用我的名字命名了一条定律”是在什么时候？
Answered Moore: “For the first 20 years, I couldn’t utter the terms Moore’s Law. It was embarrassing. It wasn’t a law. Finally, I got accustomed to it where now I could say it with a straight face.”
摩尔答道：“头20年，我一直无法把‘摩尔定律’这几个字说出口。太尴尬了。它不是什么定律。最后我终于习以为常了，现在我可以面不改色心不跳地提到它。”
Given that, is there something that he wishes he had predicted — like Moore’s Law — but did not? I asked.
我问，既然如此，有没有什么是他希望自己能预测到——就像摩尔定律那样——但实际上并未预测到的？
“The importance of the Internet surprised me,” said Moore. “It looked like it was going to be just another minor communications network that solved certain problems. I didn’t realize it was going to open up a whole universe of new opportunities, and it certainly has. I wish I had predicted that.”
“互联网的重要性让我感到惊讶，”摩尔说。“当初看来，它不过是会成为一种用于解决特定问题的不太重要的通信网络。我没意识到它会带来无数新机会，但它显然做到了。我真希望自己当年能预测到这种情况。”
