I don't think any of the engineers of these chip companies meant that "progress will end" when they said "Moore's Law will soon be at the end". I think they wer

I don't think any of the engineers of these chip companies meant that "progress will end" when they said "Moore's Law will soon be at the end". I think they were specifically referring to the fact that you won't be able to shrink transistors anymore after a certain size (close enough to the silicon atom level). Therefore you won't be able to put twice as many transistors on the same die size anymore (which is what Moore's Law was originally referring to). But of course computing progress won't end. That was silly to believe in the first place. There are many alternatives already to silicon transistors, but just like with solar panels, before they become useful and practical for the mass market you need to invest many billions in them to make cheap enough solar panels happen. When the silicon transistor and the current way of building chips is dead and buried, chip companies will put their billions into something else. It does bother me slightly that this "computing progress" will continue to be called Moore's Law though. Why not the Law of Accelerated Returns? Might be a bit longer, but it also more generic and can encompass more than one progress-related idea.