Agreed that he said that in his 1965 paper; research indicates he was asked what would happen in the semiconductor industry (which I see as "the hardware side."

Agreed that he said that in his 1965 paper; research indicates he was asked what would happen in the semiconductor industry (which I see as "the hardware side." He was Director of R&D at Fairchild at the time). Per several areas I have read, it was after Mr. Moore reviewed his thoughts in 1975 that David House made reference to an 18-month doubling of performance of circuits. This leads to my question about proxy regarding what the thoughts were (or weren't) 10+ years earlier. Was there any awareness, in 1965, of a difference between transistor count and operating performance, or did this awareness come about later on as industries matured? I tend to think that without any history to define a difference, they would have been viewed as one and the same in 1965. I theorize that at that time Mr. Moore - as a young, 35-36 year old, Director of semiconductor R&D and quite intelligent, undoubtedly - focused on the question as solely about circuits, and not necessarily taking a wider view in his article about overall performance (however performance would have been defined at the time, if it was considered as anything different from transistor size/count/density) when he was asked to write an article about future projections in the semiconductor industry.