Actually there is a lot of concern right now that in the next couple years Moors law might break.  We are starting to reach the limits of what is possible with silicon chips, once they start to get to the physical limits of smaller and smaller chips.
 
They are thinking right around 7nm is the limit, and we could hit that by 2020.
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319330
 
After that we would need to switch to a new technology, maybe quantum computers or something.

Moors Law, ehh, woot about this ;-)
D-wave quantum 

The Band19
As the teraflops increase, this becomes less of an issue.  ... And therefore, IMO, "optimization" is a footnote. It's like driving down the autobahn in the right lane with your blinker stuck on? People are going to come flying past you in the left lane @ 200+ mph...

Great point.  Today's machines are fast beyond anything we could have imagined back in the 90s when PCs were just coming to become commonplace.  So a lot of software runs acceptably fast without a lot of effort spent on optimization.
 
Also, there's another factor.  Any piece of software, with rare exceptions, is going to spend an inordinate amount of time in a small percentage of the code.  5% of the code accounting for 80% or more of the cycles consumed is far from uncommon.  So optimization requires that the code base settle down before it's even worth optimizing in many cases.  In the case of FF, version one of Pro Q worked just fine speed-wise.  Given that much of the code was solid when they enhanced it to version two, they had something that was not a moving target, code that they code reliably analyze to see where the bulk of the  cycles were being consumed.

I've got an instance of FF EQ in every track on my project. It'd be cool to find out if it's the graphics or the audio processing that is running twice as slow. A lot of times I forget to turn the animation graphics on, but when I do remember I like to use the Pre and Post combination because it's the fun one.
 
I wonder; if you leave the graphics on but close the VST window what happens to the graphics processing?

mike_mccue
I have all the FF stuff. I think of it as ok, and I'll be buying the Pro-Q2 *just because*.

 
Uh oh, cclarry's goan be all over you like white on rice for THAT decision.

mike_mccue
I wish Moore's law applied to sample buffer sizing on audio streaming drivers.

Dinty Moore's law is more stew.

Value packs, pop top lids, and a gift card for Costco in every garage.

I just loaded it up and it's pretty cool. It has some pretty powerful features, I look forward to learning how to use the analyzer and side-chain features better. Hats off to the boys at Fab. The frequency grab feature is pretty cool. I wish my ears and eyes were trained enough to take full advantage of such a powerful tool. I think one of the best ways to do this is to load up a copy of something you like and A/B them, stare and compare. Listen and look at the left channel, listen and look at the right, and the center. Both in stereo and M/S. It's pretty fascinating what you can hear, see and learn from pro mixes.