Moore's Law and Computer Technology Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical milestones, and concepts related to Moore's Law, integrated circuits, and computer architecture based on the lecture.

Feature size

Refers to the smallest components in a semiconductor device, like transistors.

Moore's Law

A principle articulated by Gordon Moore in 1965 stating that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every 12 to 24 months (or every two years), leading to exponential increases in computing power and efficiency.

Clock speed

A measurement of how fast a processor executes instructions, measured in gigahertz (GHz), where higher speeds allow more operations per second.

Multi-core processors

Modern processor designs that enhance performance by distributing workloads across multiple processing units.

High-level language (HLL) compilers

Tools that translate high-level programming languages into machine code, abstracting low-level hardware details to make software development more efficient and less error-prone.

UNIX

A pioneering operating system developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s that introduced a modular architecture built from small, simple utilities and set the standard for multitasking and multi-user capabilities.

Reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architectures

Processor architectures that simplify design by using a small, highly optimized set of instructions, resulting in faster processing speeds and greater efficiency.

Integrated circuits (ICs)

Semiconductor microchip components that become smaller, more powerful, increasingly reliable, and easier to manufacture over time.

Single-processor performance improvement

The historical trend of increasing the performance of individual processors, which ended in 2003.

Gordon Moore

The individual who articulated Moore's Law in 1965.

Heat dissipation

An ongoing hardware challenge raised by higher clock speeds and increased transistor density, identified as a solvable issue as technology advances.