Grosch’s law states that a computer’s hardware should exhibit an “economy of scale” which means the difference in performance between two computers is generally the difference in their price, squared. It comes from a quote by computer scientist Herbert Grosch in 1965, he said:
“There is a fundamental rule, which I modestly call Grosch’s law, giving added economy only as the square root of the increase in speed — that is, to do a calculation 10 times as cheaply you must do it 100 times as fast.”
Seymour Cray made a similar observation in 1963:
“Computers should obey a square law — when the price doubles, you should get at least four times as much speed.”
Computer laws, Hardware terms
