A Half-Century of Computer-Architecture Progress
The figure below summarizes the key characteristics of some machines and shows the dramatic changes that have occurred in just over 50 years.
After adjusting for inflation, price/performance has improved by almost 100 billion in 55 years, or about 58% per year.
Another way to say it is we’ve seen a factor of 10,000 improvement in cost and
a factor of 10,000,000 improvement in performance.