How will the end of Moore's law in 2020 affect Bitcoin?

[Bizmark13]

So the general agreement by those knowledgeable in the field is that by 2020, semiconductor fabrication technology will hit a wall because it will no longer be technologically feasible to produce smaller and smaller transistors. We are already at 14 nm and the wall is expected to be reached once we hit about 5-7 nm, which should be attainable by 2018-2022. Beyond that, processors would no longer function because electrons would simply tunnel through the silicon gates. In contrast, the Pentium 4 was a 130 nm chip and the original Pentium was an 800 nm chip so you can see that Moore's law, i.e. the "engine" behind the exponential increases in computing power during the last couple of decades, is coming to an end.

How will this affect Bitcoin? How will miners be affected by this?

[Mister S]

I think effectively 14nm will be our stopping point, to be honest. It's not the electron that stops us, it's the inability to cool a die efficiently, thus shortening the life of the chip.


You're forgetting though, Miners won't be affected by this at all, neither will Bitcoin.
You're talking about an engineering issue.
Chips will either get larger, or more numerous.
Water cooling will probably have to replace air and aluminum.
And Bitcoin miners will continue to hash out blocks.
And BFL will still never have shipped a working Monarch.

[S4VV4S]

I think effectively 14nm will be our stopping point, to be honest. It's not the electron that stops us, it's the inability to cool a die efficiently, thus shortening the life of the chip.


You're forgetting though, Miners won't be affected by this at all, neither will Bitcoin.
You're talking about an engineering issue.
Chips will either get larger, or more numerous.
Water cooling will probably have to replace air and aluminum.
And Bitcoin miners will continue to hash out blocks.
And BFL will still never have shipped a working Monarch.

LOL 

[Meuh6879]

stop using "electrical processor" ... use light (laser) processor instead !
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143597-pushing-computers-towards-petahertz-with-femtosecond-lasers-and-weird-dielectrics

[worhiper_-_]

The massive progress we've achieved in research of graphite lately in combination to quantum computing technologies could bring computing to the next level in the upcoming decades. This could help processing information to a new level. Maybe by that time processors of today won't be needed anymore.

[Febo]

yes. new materials. progress is not only pimp up what is already there, but also inventing new ways. It will never stop, but yes can slow down. But what mostly slow down some progress in past was money. It it is in their interest and they are strong enough they can do it.

[RomertL]

Traditional chips will be replaced by something else, just like they themselves replaced vacuum tubes. Computational power / dollar will continue to rise exponentially.

[Beliathon]

Computational power / Bitcoin will continue to rise exponentially.

Fixed that for you. The dollar will no longer exist by the time we transcend modern processor technology.

[jonald_fyookball]

The hashrate and difficulty will not increase as fast as technology improvements slow.

A fairly simple conclusion.

[waldox]

if chip developments stall in 2020 due to cooling limits
there will be improvments in cooling to allow higher density chips

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Devs would no longer be able to make more efficient (in terms of electric usage) machines.

Devs could make machines that produce less heat, that have more efficient cooling systems, or have some other advantage.

[TimS]

(I'm taking the assumptions that Moore's law exists at all, really does end in 2020, and implies that processing power will stagnate...after all, there are theoretical limitations on processing power. Even if we're not nearing those yet, we just might do that one day.)

How will this affect Bitcoin?

It will continue to produce blocks at 10 minute intervals. It's designed to do so with practically any amount of computing power. No harm done at all.

How will miners be affected by this?

Without substantially better hardware coming to market every few months, difficulty will level off and reflect the investment people have in the network (instead of that plus the progress of fast-developing ASICs and Moore's law, as we have now). The difficulty may even drop now and then, especially whenever the block reward halves, but as long as it doesn't do so too quickly, we'll continue to have block confirmations averaging under 15 minutes. The lifespan of mining hardware will become more relevant, so people will want more reliability in their ASICs. Mining will become a bit less speculative (because the future difficulty will not be quite so unknown) and market forces will drive the profit margins to be narrower than they are now, putting it further out of reach of people without super-low-cost energy. This might result in some centralization of mining power, but probably no worse than the current GHash.IO situation.
As mining becomes less important to the economy of Bitcoin, it will need to stand on its own legs as a currency, or fall flat. I think it will stand. 

[RepublicSpace]

Moore's law can never catch up to the crypto in Bitcoin. The only thing that could (MAYBE we don't know yet) would be quantum computers.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Moore's law can never catch up to the crypto in Bitcoin. The only thing that could (MAYBE we don't know yet) would be quantum computers.

There is a limit as to how efficient in terms of electric usage computers can be.

[DrG]

I think effectively 14nm will be our stopping point, to be honest. It's not the electron that stops us, it's the inability to cool a die efficiently, thus shortening the life of the chip.


You're forgetting though, Miners won't be affected by this at all, neither will Bitcoin.
You're talking about an engineering issue.
Chips will either get larger, or more numerous.
Water cooling will probably have to replace air and aluminum.
And Bitcoin miners will continue to hash out blocks.
And BFL will still never have shipped a working Monarch.

The best posts are the ones that are so serious and truthful and stick the jab in at the end.  Now I have to clean fruit punch off the monitor... well done sir, well done.

Agreed that by 2020 the 1/2s will have made the BTC minimal.  Farms will still exist but I doubt we'll have a race for expansion like we currently have.

[Brangdon]

and market forces will drive the profit margins to be narrower than they are now, putting it further out of reach of people without super-low-cost energy. This might result in some centralization of mining power, but probably no worse than the current GHash.IO situation.

I hope that the mining hardware will become cheaper as it becomes more standard, more commoditised and longer-lived. It will fall within the reach of people who don't necessarily have super-cheap electricity, but who are able to make use of the waste heat. I'm hoping it will become a way for hobbyists to heat their homes.

[Harley997]

and market forces will drive the profit margins to be narrower than they are now, putting it further out of reach of people without super-low-cost energy. This might result in some centralization of mining power, but probably no worse than the current GHash.IO situation.

I hope that the mining hardware will become cheaper as it becomes more standard, more commoditised and longer-lived. It will fall within the reach of people who don't necessarily have super-cheap electricity, but who are able to make use of the waste heat. I'm hoping it will become a way for hobbyists to heat their homes.

The miners generally have a longer "life" then the amount of time they are actually used as they eventually use more electricity then they generate in bitcoin.

I think you are correct to say that a lot of people may use miners to generate heat, likely mostly up north in the winter.

I am interested to know how efficient they are at heating then other space heaters are.

[RomertL]

Computational power / Bitcoin will continue to rise exponentially.

Fixed that for you. The dollar will no longer exist by the time we transcend modern processor technology.

Hehe right. Or maybe exist but not so important anymore. If some people are to be believed Bitcoin/USD value will continue to rise exponentially longterm. Which give computer power/usd a exponential growth that grows exponentially. That's pretty fast  

[jubalix]

mining is maybe what allows the 2020 ~ or whatever moores law to be overcome, eg mining tech drives processor dev. Not intel etc

[Lorenzo]

So wait, if Moore's law ends in 2020 then will the Bitcoin mining difficulty stop increasing? So right now you could buy a 1TH/s miner for something like 7 BTC, make 1 BTC in the first month, and never break even because the difficulty would continue increasing. But a 5-7 nm miner bought in the beginning of 2020 will last you indefinitely?

I'm confused.