What Comes After Moore's Law Slows Down
The decades-long trend of ever-shrinking transistors is running into real physical limits. Here's what's actually replacing it as the main driver of progress.
Moore's Law, the long-standing observation that the number of transistors on a chip roughly doubles every couple of years, has slowed considerably as transistors approach limits set by the physical size of atoms themselves.
What's actually driving progress instead now
Rather than relying primarily on smaller transistors, recent performance gains increasingly come from smarter chip architecture, specialized processors built for specific tasks like AI, and the 3D stacking techniques that pack more capability into the same physical space.
Why this shift is a genuine change, not just a slowdown
This represents a real shift in how computing performance improves going forward, moving away from one universal trend applying to nearly all chips and toward more specialized, purpose-built approaches tailored to specific kinds of workloads.