In 1965, Gordon Moore was preparing a speech and made a memorable observation. When he started to graph data about the growth in memory chip performance, he realized there was a striking trend. Each new chip contained roughly twice as much capacity as its predecessor, and each chip was released within 18-24 months of the previous chip. If this trend continued, he reasoned, computing power would rise exponentially over relatively brief periods of time.

Moore's observation, now known as Moore's Law, described a trend that has continued and is still remarkably accurate. It is the basis for many planners' performance forecasts. In 26 years the number of transistors on a chip has increased more than 3,200 times, from 2,300 on the 4004 in 1971 to 7.5 million on the Pentium® II processor.

Machrone's Law

"Gordon Moore just plain got it right . . . I should also mention that Moore's Law has also given rise to Machrone's Law, which was true for many years, which is that the machine you want always costs $5,000."

Rock's Law

"A very small addendum to Moore's Law is Rock's Law which says that the cost of capital equipment to build semiconductors will double every four years."

Maintained by John Loomis, last updated 24 Aug 1999