But chip designers really only needed to believe that they could finish the next generation or two on their roadmap. 214 Then, having done this a few times, they’d develop a sense that this process would continue. Look four or five generations out, and keeping Moore’s law going seems like an impossible task; look one generation out, and it’s a worthy challenge, not an impossible one. (This dynamic may be familiar to anyone who has flipped to the middle of a new math textbook, seen an impenetrable blizzard of obscure symbols and notations, and then, once they actually reach that section, found
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