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In 1965, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, wrote a paper in which he observed that the speed of computers would double every two years. This maxim, now known as Moore's Law, has been valid for decades. However, it seems likely that within ten years, Moore's law will no longer be valid. Moore's Law specifically refers to the number of transistors that can be placed on a computer chip, and that number can easily be doubled by manufacturers every two years. Manufacturers have easily met the law's requirements since it took effect, and starting in 2008, transistors used in computer chips will be as small as 3.9 million of them would fit on the head of a pin. Moore now says that by 2020 the laws of physics will catch up with computer chip manufacturers and Moore's Law will no longer be a valid measurement tool. Mr. Moore revealed this information when talking about Intel's new chip marketed as the Henry processor. This new chip won't be widely available until 2009, and its circuits are 45 nanometers wide and contain more than 800 million transistors. The fact that Moore's law refers specifically to the number of transistors and not to the speed of computation has now become important. The two have been used interchangeably for decades, but it seems that's no longer the case. Many experts believe that although the laws of physics will break Moore's Law, computing speeds will continue to increase at the same rate, or even faster. This will be done through alternative chip manufacturing methods. An alternative type of manufacturing is called nanotechnology, which focuses on assembling chips, one molecule at a time.?You could call this the next generation of chip molecular devices,? said Jim Fully of . Science fiction could become scientific reality in the next decade, as these molecular devices are still in development. While faster chips are a concern for manufacturers, it's up to the end user to make use of that speed. Chips containing billions of transistors will no longer be relevant if the computer software running cannot take advantage of the speed. This was recently the case with Windows XP, and it was one of the reasons why Microsoft released Vista. The new software is designed to take better advantage of newer, faster chips as well as higher levels of computer memory. Dan Crawford, a former Microsoft employee and software enthusiast, said that although the 32-bit version of Vista uses only GB of RAM, the 64-bit version of Vista can support 128 GB of RAM or more. Currently, there are no PCs capable of supporting 128GB RAM, so this issue will likely be debated for a long time. Once software manufacturers catch up with today's chips, the speed of users' experiences on computers will be greatly increased. Chip speed remains a significant concern, but perhaps no more so than the ability to use that speed on a regular basis.