Moore’s law turns 50

According to The Economist, signs are multiplying that half a century after it was advanced, Moore's Law is running out of steam.

It is not so much that physical limits are getting in the way—even though producing transistors only 14 nanometres (billionths of a metre) wide, the current state of the art can be quite tricky. Intel says that it can keep the law going for at least another ten years, eventually slimming its transistors down to 5nm, about the thickness of a cell membrane. Other than shrinking circuitry further, it has also started to stack components, in effect building 3D chips.