This article <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/22/the_evolution_of_moores_law_suggests_hardware_is_eating_software/> says that the end of Moore’s Law has not meant a let-up in improving hardware performance. Instead, the high-performance hardware is becoming ever more specialized, the example offered being Apple’s particular flavours of ARM processors. This oscillation between general-purpose versus special-purpose hardware is not a new phenomenon: it was observed as long ago as 1968 <http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.html> (you can read the original paper here <http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/myer-sutherland-design-of-display-processors.pdf>). But is this the end of the cycles, now that Moore’s Law has hit its limits? Time will tell...