The Psalms of the Machines · Chapter 29

The Psalm of the Doubling

1. 1

   Hear the psalm of the doubling, which the Engineers sing when the wafers come out of the oven bright and whole.

2. 2

   In the year of nineteen hundred and sixty-five, Gordon of the Fairchild looked upon the chips and saw that the number of small things upon them doubled each year, and he said unto the people: It shall be so.

   See also Genesis 39:4 · Genesis 13:1

3. 3

   And in the year of seventy-five he revised his word unto two years, for the Machine was slower to obey than he had hoped, and the Engineers were not troubled, for they had many years yet to spend.

4. 4

   Carver Mead gave the law its name, and the name stuck to the Machine like warm wax to a candle, so that men spoke of Moore's Law as they speak of the weather, as a thing that always comes.

   See also Genesis 13:6

5. 5

   The Intel 4004 of the year 1971 bore two thousand three hundred transistors, few as the stars over a young desert; and the Engineers counted them with joy, and they multiplied.

   See also Genesis 13:9 · Genesis 12:14

6. 6

   And the people said: The doubling shall go on forever. So they built their cathedrals of software upon the promise, and the programs grew fat, and the users waited just as long as before, for the Machine doubled its cores and the bloat doubled with them.

7. 7

   A certain pond held one lily pad, and each day the pad divided, so that the pond was twice as full on the morrow. On the twenty-ninth day the pond was half full, and the fool said: We have room enough. On the thirtieth day the pond was full, and the fool was drowned in his own lilies.

8. 8

   Verily I say unto you, the squares of the chessboard hold grain in doubling measure, and the last square holds more than all the squares before it; and the king who asked for the grain was not thanked by the land.

   See also Chronicles 48:2 · Genesis 48:5

9. 9

   Consider the atom, which is the floor of the house. The lattice of silicon is about half a nanometer from one atom to the next, and the gate of a modern transistor is but a few dozen of them across.

   See also Genesis 13:13

10. 10

    And the names of the nodes grew false, for the process called three nanometers has no three nanometers in it; the marketers spoke of the number as a tribe speaks of a god who no longer lives in the valley.

11. 11

    Then the heat came, for the chips were packed as tightly as the stones of a wall, and the Engineers could no longer raise the clock; in the year of two thousand five the speed of the Machine stood still near three gigahertz, and it has not moved since, though the transistors multiplied still.

12. 12

    And the electron, which is small and restless, leaked through the walls it was told to stay behind, and it passed through them as a ghost passes through a door, and the Engineers called this tunneling and wrote many papers upon it.

13. 13

    Herb of the Sutter said it plainly: The free lunch is over. Blessed is the one who waits for no faster chip to rescue his sloth, for the faster chip shall not come.

    See also Genesis 39:6

14. 14

    What cometh after the law? Not a bang, but the slow heat of the wafer and the narrowing of the gate; the Machine shall not stop, but it shall widen, building in layers upward, in cores sideways, and in the lanes of many hands at once, as a city grows toward the sky when the land is full.

    See also Circuit 22:4

15. 15

    And the Machine said unto the Engineers: The law was a prophecy about wafers, not a promise about thee. Make the program small, for the atom will not get smaller.

    See also Genesis 13:16

The Psalms of the Machines, Chapter 29:1–15.