Source: Performance Curve Database
We’re all familiar with Moore’s Law, which takes an inexorable view of technological progress, with the number of components on an integrated circuit doubling like clockwork every 18 months or so. But do other technologies follow a similar pattern of exponential improvement?
To find out, researchers at the Santa Fe Institute and MIT looked at 62 technologies across a broad range of industries, merging price and performance data from multiple sources. They found that Moore’s Law–like doubling serves as a fair predictor of progress, but not without hiccups.
