Neural Algorithms and Computing Beyond Moore's Law

The impending demise of Moore's Law has begun to broadly impact the computing research community.38 Moore's Law has driven the computing industry for many decades, with nearly every aspect of society benefiting from the advance of improved computing processors, sensors, and controllers. Behind these products has been a considerable research industry, with billions of dollars invested in fields ranging from computer science to electrical engineering. Fundamentally, however, the exponential growth in computing described by Moore's Law was driven by advances in materials science.30,37 From the start, the power of the computer has been limited by the density of transistors. Progressive advances in how to manipulate silicon through advancing lithography methods and new design tools have kept advancing computing in spite of perceived limitations of the dominant fabrication processes of the time.37 There is strong evidence that this time is indeed different, and Moore's Law is soon to be over for good.3,38 Already, Dennard scaling, Moore's Law's lesser known but equally important parallel, appears to have ended.11 Dennard's scaling refers to the property that the reduction of transistor size came with an equivalent reduction of required power.8