Donald Knuth Quotes

Computers double their performance every month.

I'm a physicist, and we have something called Moore's Law, which says computer power doubles every 18 months. So every Christmas, we more or less assume that our toys and appliances are more or less twice as powerful as the previous Christmas.

PCs don't suck. They're inadequate.

Computers get better faster than anything else ever.

At some point, Moore's law will break down.

Computer power grows according to Moore's law, as does the sophistication of handheld devices.

It's hardware that makes a machine fast. It's software that makes a fast machine slow.

As long as we can make them smaller, we can make them faster.

Essentially, we're always trying to reduce latency. As you try to reduce the latency of the experience, you can only get it down so far before we start running into the limitations of game engines, computing, the intensity of the experience you're trying to compute.

A big part of the success of Microsoft was that every year, the chips our software ran on got faster and cheaper. They doubled in capability every 18 months under Moore's law.

If it weren't for Moore's law changing the playing field continuously, I would have been long gone. The rapid pace of hardware evolution still keeps things fresh for me.

The strategy of my coach and me was that we looked at pictures of all the best pole vaulters from around the world, and we took the best parts from them, and we created a person that had never existed. We then started to work toward being such a person.

The truth of Moore's law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.

The capacity of computers is doubling every eight months. It's exponential development. I think it's a real threat, actually, that a computer one day will be more intelligent than us.

Intel's still our main partner. We have not announced anything with AMD and don't have anything planned, but we're constantly being aware to make sure our customers get the best technology.

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.

Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system.

Every two years, to keep Moore's Law happening, you have to invent... That's where I grew up.

Personally, I tend to be more interested in security and performance-related issues than other things.

No consumer product improves more drastically, year after year, than the computer.

Our chips keep getting faster, and our data rates keep climbing, but at the end of the day - or worse, by mid-afternoon - those power meters on our screens inevitably turn to red.

No matter what, the entrepreneur must strive to be above average and, at the same time, understand what is driving those averages they are seeking to beat. Take the time to understand and test the metrics you are using, and then you can not only set the average, you can exceed it.

We try to continually push ourselves to do more and more, not just on the hardware side but also in terms of developers' tools so they can take advantage of the hardware that's there, in the best way.

People tend to look at processing power as how to gauge a piece of hardware is powerful for us.

There is a mentality that if you're a long time AMDer, that we're x86: we know what we're doing, and it's just about building better x86 devices.