The essay forecast that as circuits became more densely packed with microscopic transistors, computing power would exponentially increase in performance and diminish in cost over the years. Moore contended that this trend could be predicted mathematically, so that memory costing $500,000 in 1965 would come all the way down to $3,000 by 1985—an insight so basic to the subsequent growth and expansion of the computer industry that ever since then it has been known as “Moore’s Law.”
