End of Moore's law?

[Daniel Feenberg]

On Sat, 10 Jul 2010, Mark Woodward wrote:

> Moore's law as we have understood it may have stopped providing value
> for merely buying something new. We have all been doing it for the last
> 20 or so years.  Every year and a half or two years, you could spend the
> same amount of money and get double the computer. 20MHZ 80386 a year and
> a half later was a 33MHZ 80386 with twice as much RAM and hard disk. The
> trend had been happening consistently for a long time.
>
> Now, something is funny. I bought an HP laptop about 2 years ago. 1.9Ghz
> dual core, 2G RAM (Upgraded to 4G a year later) 160G HD (upgraded to
> 320G a year later). My total for upgrades was about $120. I went to
> Microcenter and looked for laptop, the upgrade of the model I currently
> have had 4G RAM, 500G hard disk, and a 2.1Ghz dual core for about $250
> more than what I purchased my current laptop.
>
> I recognize that it is a "better" machine than my two year old laptop,
> but it ain't all that much better. $120 upgrades that I made a year ago,
> make a $1000 new laptop almost senseless.
>
> This is bad news in a lot of ways. if I can't justify replacing a 2 year
> old laptop based on performance improvements, I bet I am not alone. A
> lot of companies are built on Moore's law and the upgrade treadmill and
> the ripple effect is doubtless having an effect on just about everyone's
> employment.
>
> Any thoughts?

Economists talk about the "law of diminishing returns", which holds 
(roughly) that going from 1 mHz to 1000 mHz is a lot more important than 
going from 1001 mHz to 2000 mHz, so what you are observing isn't 
unexpected.

Daniel Feenberg


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