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striking trend. Each new chip contained roughly twice as much capacity as its predecessor, and each chip was released within 1824 months of the previous chip. If this trend continued, he reasoned, computing power would rise exponentially over relatively brief periods of time. |
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Moore's observation, now known as Moore's Law, described a trend that has continued and is still remarkably accurate. It is the basis for many planners' performance forecasts. In 26 years, the number of transistors on a chip has increased more than 3,200 times, from 2,300 on the 4004 in 1971, to 7.5 million on the Pentium® II processor. |
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This exponential growth in chip functionality is closely tied to the exponential growth in the chip market, which has been approximately doubling every five years. This dramatic climb has fueled the fortunes of several major companies that either make or utilize chips, and has also been a significant factor in the growth in the gross national product of several nations. |
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Exponential growth is one thing to talk about, it's quite another thing to really understand. For example, do you remember that old trick about starting with a penny on day one, and doubling the amount every day for a month? It seems laughable at first. After 10 days, you only have $5.12. After 20 days, you have still made little progress, only up to $5,242.88. By day 25, with only 6 days to go, you have only just cleared $100,000. Then the wonder of exponential growth kicks in, and by day 31, you have $10,737,418.20. |
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How does this growth relate to the Sixth Market? Well, what if Moore had been wrong? What if it had taken five years to double capacity instead of 18 months? |
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If that had happened, we would still be using an Intel 386 processor, the Internet would still be a fantasy, online trading would simply not be possible, and all of those stockbrokers at Merrill could go back to charging $300 and more for a 1,000 share trade. There would be no Sixth Market . . . yet. |
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But, Moore's Law is still chugging along, and the first requirement for the Sixth Marketpowerful processorsis solidly in place. |
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Abundant and Affordable Bandwidth |
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And then there's bandwidth. The Sixth Market takes lots and lots of bandwidth to move information and give you fast executions. George Gilder postulated his Law of the Telecosm: "The Law of the Telecosm |
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