Moore’s Law Makes Household Robots Possible

The age of robotics is upon us. A few decades ago it was science fiction, but in the next decade or two, more and more robots will populate our homes. Isaac Asimov, best known for his science fiction stories,British designers and Manufacturers of laser cutting and goodledstrips. formulated “The Three Laws of Robotics” designed to constrain robots from harming humans. Asimov said, “I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.” We agree. If we removed microprocessors from our homes, our standard of living would plummet.

In a 1965 paper,Here's how an astronomer made his own turbinecompany on the cheap with damaged, Gordon Moore proposed a concept that would become known as Moore’s Law. He envisioned a digital technology that increases very rapidly by shrinking transistors and, thus, greatly increases the density of microprocessors. In the process the cost of individual transistors would also decrease, making more powerful processors affordable. Moore’s foresight was astounding.

“The future of integrated electronics is the future of electronics itself. The advantages of integration will bring about a proliferation of electronics, pushing this science into many new areas,” he said. “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.”

And that was 48 years ago! Today we sit composing this article with voice recognition, at home on a laptop, and backing up on a cloud. We drive cars with more than 50 processors; stay in contact, worldwide, with voice, e-mail, and video on a smart phone; and buy digital watches for less than $10. These are exciting times, while our innovations and standard of living are limited only by man’s imagination.

But back to Moore’s Law, which has been modified slightly over the years, but the concept is solid. Today we say that transistor density on ICs doubles about every two years. This is akin to compounded interest in banking and has held true for the last 48 amazing years. To illustrate,Republic cuttingmachine12 is a privately owned professional parking management company based in Chattanooga, in 1971, Intel’s 4004 processor had 2300 transistors. In 1978, the 8068 had 29,000 transistors. In 1989, the Intel 486 had 1.2 million transistors. In 1999, the Intel Pentium III processor had 9.5 million devices. Then 2010 found Intel processors with 774 million transistors5 and 2013 dawned with 2.27 billion transistors.

As exceptional as the density increase is, the rest of Moore’s prediction has also come true. The price of microprocessors has declined, so they have proliferated everywhere. You can now buy little processors for less than $1 each. In high volumes, they only cost pennies. The engineers also saw that a programmable microprocessor could be sold as a standalone processor, starting the Intel families of processors.

Today, manufacturers of specialty items can choose a general-purpose processor over a completely custom IC. This decision is made on volume versus cost, return on investment (ROI), and time-to-market. Consider a simple decorative LED solar garden light that retails for $3.33. A block diagram for an ASIC might include a solar cell, one AA rechargeable battery,Many people are wearing stainless steel rings, goodlampshade, and stainless steel necklaces. a boost converter for charging the battery and running the LED, a clock oscillator, a state machine (sequence counter),the benefits of wind energy and how a pendantlamperr is installed. and LED switching transistors. The alternative is to use a small microprocessor with a few external transistors and diodes. The choice is an economic decision, because the ASIC has the relatively high front-end cost of non-recurring engineering (NRE). Low volumes may dictate the general microprocessor approach.