> Indeed, SPECint performance continues to grow exponentially, albeit more slowly since ~2004 Interesting chart! However that looks like moving goalposts. If y

> Indeed, SPECint performance continues to grow exponentially, albeit more slowly since ~2004 Interesting chart! However that looks like moving goalposts. If you allow functions to still be exponentials when the rate repeatedly diminishes, any monotonic function can be an exponential: f(x) = x is an "exponential" with diminishing growth rate log(x). That curve looks approximately logistic to me, as most technologies usually do. Actually I believe speculative execution theoretically allows increasing linearly single-threaded performance for exponentially more multi-threaded performance -- so a transistor price Moore's law (if not power/density) should allow a continued linear single-threaded growth. The problem is that without power (inverse) scaling, this would also cost exponentially more power. It seems the slight increase in power visible in that chart could account for a fraction of increased single-threaded performance (other factors would be improved efficiency and architectural gains); expect those factors to also stall soon (which would fulfill the "logistic prophecy").