Here are some examples of people who need more CPU performance: gamers, engineers, scientists and automated financial traders. People doing special effects for video and film is another example. Video analysis for security and law enforcement is another example. Almost any kind of simulation gets more accurate with more CPU performance (cloth simulation, weather prediction, climate modeling, computational chemistry, computational fluid dynamics, crash simulation, ...). Voice recognition should become more accurate with increased CPU performance.

Doug Siebert on 12/31/11 wrote:
> If Intel announced tomorrow that it had reached the limit of Moore's Law, and
> could not make future generations of CPUs any faster than
> the current
> generation, I doubt it would have all that large of an effect of PC sales.

Do you think corporations would replace PCs as often if there was no improvement in CPU performance? I don't. I know people whose companies used to replace their PCs every 3 years and today it's every 5 years. That's because the rate of improvement in performance has slowed down. If the rate of improvement slows down further, those purchases will get delayed even more.