Moore & Metcalf Laws for Software

Moore's Law

• Moore's law says chip density doubles every 18 months. This has accelerated in the 1990s, now doubling the horsepower on your laptop each year. Over n years, the computing power on your desktop increases by 2 to the n power.

Metcalf's Law

• Metcalf's law says that computer power increases by the square of the number of nodes on the network. Nodes on the Internet have doubled in 1995, 1996, and 1997, so the Internet compounds Moore's law for a net compute power increase of 2 to the 3n power.

References

• Moore's Law /morz law/ prov.The observation that the logic density of silicon integrated circuits has closely followed the curve (bits per square inch) = 2^((t - 1962)) where t is time in years; that is, the amount of information storable on a given amount of silicon has roughly doubled every year since the technology was invented.
• George Gilder. Metcalf's Law and Legacy. Forbes ASAP, 13 Sep 93.