When Moore wrote in 1965, commercial use of MOS was 10 years in the future and Dennard scaling would not become widely understood and stirring interest in CMOS until 15 years in the future. So, he was actually observing an era much like now, with multiple chiplets inside the can and all sorts of random improvements that had an emergent trend. The Dennard era, which gave Moore its main impulse, was about 20 years long. Maybe 25 years if you include controlling tunnel leakage by introducing Hf-based dielectrics, and FinFETs since they sort of crinkle the surface of the chip to give you double the area, and otherwise obey classic Dennard laws of constant power per unit area.
But even during the Dennard era there were a bunch of big random innovations needed to keep things going. CMP allowing the number of metal routing layers to balloon, keeping distances under control. Damascene metals allowing much finer metals carrying heavier currents. Strained channels for higher frequency and better balance between P and N. Work-function-biased fully depleted transistors to avoid the stochastic problems with doping small channels. Etc.
So what really happened is not that Moore ended. We still have a wealth of random improvements (where "wealth" is the driving force) which contribute to an emergent Moore improvement. But the large change is Dennard ended, which gave us scaling at constant power. Although some of the random improvements do improve energy efficiency per unit of computation, they are not overall holding the line on power per cm2. At the end of the classic Dennard we were around 25W /cm2 but now we commonly have 50W in server chips, and there are schemes in the works to use liquid cooling up to hundreds of W / cm2.
Well, ok. But does that kill Moore? Not if it keeps getting cheaper per unit function. And by that I do not mean per transistor. But as long at that SOC in your phone keeps running faster radio, drawing better graphics, understanding your voice, generating 3D audio, etc., and is affordable by hundreds of millions of consumers, Moore remains undead.
But even during the Dennard era there were a bunch of big random innovations needed to keep things going. CMP allowing the number of metal routing layers to balloon, keeping distances under control. Damascene metals allowing much finer metals carrying heavier currents. Strained channels for higher frequency and better balance between P and N. Work-function-biased fully depleted transistors to avoid the stochastic problems with doping small channels. Etc.
So what really happened is not that Moore ended. We still have a wealth of random improvements (where "wealth" is the driving force) which contribute to an emergent Moore improvement. But the large change is Dennard ended, which gave us scaling at constant power. Although some of the random improvements do improve energy efficiency per unit of computation, they are not overall holding the line on power per cm2. At the end of the classic Dennard we were around 25W /cm2 but now we commonly have 50W in server chips, and there are schemes in the works to use liquid cooling up to hundreds of W / cm2.
Well, ok. But does that kill Moore? Not if it keeps getting cheaper per unit function. And by that I do not mean per transistor. But as long at that SOC in your phone keeps running faster radio, drawing better graphics, understanding your voice, generating 3D audio, etc., and is affordable by hundreds of millions of consumers, Moore remains undead.