Abstract
In 1965, Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, said that new memory chips have twice the capacity of prior chips, and that new chips are released every 18 to 24 months. This statement has become known as Moore’s law. Moore’s law means that memory size increases exponentially. More generally, the exponential growth of computers has applied not only to memory size, but also to many computer capabilities, and since 1965, Moore’s law has remained remarkably accurate. Further, this remarkable growth in capabilities has occurred with a steady decrease in price. Anyone who has even a little appreciation of exponential growth realizes that exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely. However, the history of computers is littered with ‘experts’ who have prematurely declared the end of Moore’s law. The quotation at the beginning of this section indicates that future growth of computers has often been underestimated. The exponential growth of computer capabilities has a very important implication for the management of a nuclear medicine department. The growth in productivity of the staff of a department is slow, especially when compared to the growth in capabilities of a computer. This means that whatever decision was made in the past about the balance between staff
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Parker, J. A.
[1]
- Division of Nuclear Medicine and Department of Radiology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (United States)
Citation Formats
Parker, J. A.
Computers in Nuclear Medicine. Chapter 12.
IAEA: N. p.,
2014.
Web.
Parker, J. A.
Computers in Nuclear Medicine. Chapter 12.
IAEA.
Parker, J. A.
2014.
"Computers in Nuclear Medicine. Chapter 12."
IAEA.
@misc{etde_22327863,
title = {Computers in Nuclear Medicine. Chapter 12}
author = {Parker, J. A.}
abstractNote = {In 1965, Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, said that new memory chips have twice the capacity of prior chips, and that new chips are released every 18 to 24 months. This statement has become known as Moore’s law. Moore’s law means that memory size increases exponentially. More generally, the exponential growth of computers has applied not only to memory size, but also to many computer capabilities, and since 1965, Moore’s law has remained remarkably accurate. Further, this remarkable growth in capabilities has occurred with a steady decrease in price. Anyone who has even a little appreciation of exponential growth realizes that exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely. However, the history of computers is littered with ‘experts’ who have prematurely declared the end of Moore’s law. The quotation at the beginning of this section indicates that future growth of computers has often been underestimated. The exponential growth of computer capabilities has a very important implication for the management of a nuclear medicine department. The growth in productivity of the staff of a department is slow, especially when compared to the growth in capabilities of a computer. This means that whatever decision was made in the past about the balance between staff and computers is now out of date. A good heuristic is: always apply more computer capacity and less people to a new task. Or stated more simply, hardware is ‘cheap’, at least with respect to what you learned in training or what you decided last time you considered the balance between hardware and ‘peopleware’.}
place = {IAEA}
year = {2014}
month = {Dec}
}
title = {Computers in Nuclear Medicine. Chapter 12}
author = {Parker, J. A.}
abstractNote = {In 1965, Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, said that new memory chips have twice the capacity of prior chips, and that new chips are released every 18 to 24 months. This statement has become known as Moore’s law. Moore’s law means that memory size increases exponentially. More generally, the exponential growth of computers has applied not only to memory size, but also to many computer capabilities, and since 1965, Moore’s law has remained remarkably accurate. Further, this remarkable growth in capabilities has occurred with a steady decrease in price. Anyone who has even a little appreciation of exponential growth realizes that exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely. However, the history of computers is littered with ‘experts’ who have prematurely declared the end of Moore’s law. The quotation at the beginning of this section indicates that future growth of computers has often been underestimated. The exponential growth of computer capabilities has a very important implication for the management of a nuclear medicine department. The growth in productivity of the staff of a department is slow, especially when compared to the growth in capabilities of a computer. This means that whatever decision was made in the past about the balance between staff and computers is now out of date. A good heuristic is: always apply more computer capacity and less people to a new task. Or stated more simply, hardware is ‘cheap’, at least with respect to what you learned in training or what you decided last time you considered the balance between hardware and ‘peopleware’.}
place = {IAEA}
year = {2014}
month = {Dec}
}