How the Law Shaped the Modern World

The doubling of transistor density every two years meant that computing power grew exponentially while costs fell dramatically. This predictable cadence allowed the entire technology industry to plan decades ahead: semiconductor fabs scheduled billion-dollar investments, software developers could count on faster hardware, and consumer electronics shrank from room-sized to pocket-sized.

• Enabled the PC revolution by making processors affordable for consumers

• Drove miniaturization from mainframes to smartphones over roughly 40 years

• Gave software developers a reliable hardware performance baseline for long-term planning

• Powered the AI boom, as modern deep learning depends on the massive compute gains accumulated over decades of Moore's Law progress

• Eventually hit physical silicon limits in the last decade, pushing engineers toward new approaches like chiplets, 3D stacking, and specialized AI accelerators