Gordon Moore was preparing a speech in 1965 when he made a striking observation. As he graphed data on the growth of memory chip performance, he noted that each integrated circuit released 18 months after its predecessor doubled in capacity. His conclusion was that computing power would rise exponentially in relatively short periods of time.

Although this observation cannot be considered a natural law, it has served as an engineering consistency through the end of this millennium and aptly tagged "Moore's law." For example, in 1959, we had singular components. In 1964 that number jumped to 32; 1965 saw 64-component integrated circuits. By the time 1975 rolled around, engineers had pieced together ICs over a thousand times more complex than what had been available in the previous decade. Now, 25 years later, we are dealing with the Pentium 4 - a 42 million-transistor integrated circuit. Now if that sort of progress is not breathtaking, I don't know what is.

Intel's latest announcement concerns a technology that should allow them to manufacture processors that follow the trend Moore's law outlines. By shrinking transistor gate length from 130nm to 30nm (or .03micron), Intel will be able to dramatically scale processor frequency upwards and decrease operational voltage to less than one volt.

What will be the end result of Intel's gate shrink? According to the chip giant, this process should be available for mass production by the year 2005, with 10GHz processors and lower voltage parts. Of course, we're here to give you the details on Intel's latest development and add our two cents.