The End of Moore's Law and the New Performance Revolution

2025-02-23

The end of Moore's Law has arrived, forcing us to rethink how we achieve computing performance gains. A groundbreaking 2020 Science paper titled "There's Plenty of Room at the Top" demonstrated that a simple matrix multiplication could run 60,000 times faster through optimization - taking a 7-hour Python computation down to just 0.4 seconds. This dramatic improvement reveals the massive opportunities that exist in software, algorithms, and hardware architecture.

Matrix Multiplication Performance Speedups

The Performance Crisis

Modern software development has prioritized developer productivity over runtime performance. This made sense during the Moore's Law era when hardware improvements reliably doubled performance every two years. But that era is over - semiconductor miniaturization is hitting fundamental physical limits.

The matrix multiplication example shows the scale of inefficiency in modern software:

Three Paths Forward

1. Software Performance Engineering

We must shift focus from rapid development to runtime efficiency. This means:

2. Algorithm Innovation

Some algorithmic improvements have matched or exceeded Moore's Law gains:

3. Hardware Architecture

Hardware is becoming more specialized and heterogeneous:

The Way Forward

Future performance gains will be:

As the auto industry evolved from gas-guzzling muscle cars to efficient hybrids and EVs, computing must evolve from bloated abstractions to lean, optimized systems. With Moore's Law ending, there's plenty of room at the top - we just have to work harder to get there.

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