Is Moore's law still true?

It held for decades but is now slowing as transistor sizes approach atomic limits. The broader lesson — that some technologies improve exponentially — remains useful even as this specific doubling cadence bends.

Why does Moore's law matter?

Because exponential change defeats linear intuition. Forecasts that add rather than double badly underestimate technological progress, which is why so many 'impossible' compute-heavy things became ordinary within a couple of decades.

Moore's law

Technology & forecasting

Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors on a chip roughly doubles every two years, so computing power grows exponentially while cost falls. More broadly, it’s the model that some technologies improve at a steady exponential rate.

By the ReadGlobe Editors · Reviewed 2026-05-29

Exponential by nature: a quantity that doubles at a fixed interval looks explosive once it turns the corner.

How it works

Recognise that some technologies improve not linearly but exponentially — doubling at a regular cadence. Project forward by doubling, not adding, and expect that what’s impossible or expensive today can become trivial within a few doubling periods.

Human intuition is linear, but the most important forces are exponential — and that gap is where fortunes are made.

How to use it

Forecasting technology: extrapolate by doublings, not increments.
Anticipating that today’s expensive or impossible compute-heavy thing may soon be cheap.
Recognising exponential trends elsewhere (solar cost, gene sequencing, bandwidth).

Worked example

A task needing a supercomputer in 2000 runs on a phone today, because compute power doubled roughly every two years for decades. Planning that assumed linear progress badly underestimated where computing — and everything built on it — would be.

Where it fails

Exponential trends don’t last forever — Moore’s law itself is slowing as physics hits atomic limits, and treating any exponential as permanent invites the same error as treating it as linear. Knowing when an exponential will bend is the hard part.

It is an empirical observation, not a physical law, and stayed true partly because the industry treated it as a target to hit.
Transistor count long ago stopped tracking usable performance for many real workloads, so the headline curve overstates progress.
Extrapolating one component's exponential ignores the surrounding system, whose slower parts increasingly cap what the fast part delivers.

The counter-model: Diminishing returns — Every exponential eventually bends into a plateau, and diminishing returns describes the flattening that Moore's law is now visibly entering.

How to apply it, step by step

Identify the specific metric that is claimed to grow exponentially.
Check whether that metric still maps to the outcome you actually care about.
Look for the physical or economic limit that will eventually bend the curve.
Estimate how close the trend is to that limit before you rely on it.
Plan for the plateau rather than assuming the exponential continues indefinitely.

The deeper point

Its enduring lesson outlives the chip-specific trend: human intuition is linear, but some of the most important forces are exponential, and the gap between the two is where both the great surprises and the great fortunes are made. We overestimate the short run and underestimate the long.

Frequently asked

What is Moore's law?: It’s the observation that the number of transistors on a microchip roughly doubles every two years, so computing power grows exponentially while cost falls. More broadly, it models technologies that improve at a steady exponential rate.
Is Moore's law still true?: It held for decades but is now slowing as transistor sizes approach atomic limits. The broader lesson — that some technologies improve exponentially — remains useful even as this specific doubling cadence bends.
Why does Moore's law matter?: Because exponential change defeats linear intuition. Forecasts that add rather than double badly underestimate technological progress, which is why so many 'impossible' compute-heavy things became ordinary within a couple of decades.

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APA

ReadGlobe. (2026). Moore's law. https://readglobe.com/model/moores-law/

MLA

"Moore's law." ReadGlobe, 29 May 2026, readglobe.com/model/moores-law/.

Primary source: Wikipedia

Editorial synthesis © ReadGlobe 2026, drawing on the mental-models tradition (Charlie Munger, Farnam Street) and the primary sources for each model. · Last reviewed 2026-05-29.