Hardware Complexity of Microprocessor Design According to Moore's Law

Abstract

The increasing of the number of transistors on a chip, which plays the main role in improvement in the performance and increasing the speed of a microprocessor, causes rapidly increasing of microprocessor design complexity. Based on Moore's Law the number of transistors should be doubled every 24 months. The doubling of transistor count affects increasing of microprocessor design complexity, power dissipation, and cost of design effort. This article presents a proposal to discuss the matter of scaling hardware complexity of a microprocessor design related to Moore's Law. Based on the discussion a hardware complexity measure is presented.