While interesting, the figure you linked is from 2003. Is there an updated version that includes the last 2 decades?
Edit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...
Figure 1 has an updated version, and it is rather bleak.
Edit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...
Figure 1 has an updated version, and it is rather bleak.
I don't have the knowledge to judge how much of this slowdown is due to the ITER project being international and difficult to manage, and how much of it is due to us approaching the limits of what is physically possible.
However it's good to keep in mind that our level of funding for fusion is pathetic and scientists themselves have categorised it as "fusion never"
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._his...
A pretty simple model that accounts for the data is that Moore's law, and many other exponential growth examples, require ever larger capital expenditures. This worked for Moore's law because at ever step of improvement the devices produced were highly economically valuable. For fusion, on the other hand, you can have an exponentially improving triple product, but it has zero economic value until you cross the net-positive threshold. That basically means that the exponentially increasing development funding needs to be provided by the government, philanthropy, or some other non-profit source. If you're exponentially improving, with exponential costs, and you hit the ceiling of what the government and philanthropists are willing to provide, your progress can come to an abrupt halt without it necessarily meaning the basic exponential engineering curve you were following stops.
But we don't actually have exponential improvement in any physical object, that's not to do with information processing - a solar panel or battery made today is not 10x better than one made 10 years ago.
It's not even true of all semiconductors - power electronics, radio, etc.
Do you understand how differently that reads from your original comment?
> Fusion has advanced faster than Moore's law - and unlike the holy grail of computing, true AI, it's now clearly within reach.
You made the claim it's advancing at a rapid rate and almost here, and when someone pulled up the data it wildly disagreed with you. Now you're just moving the goalposts.
Fusion is usually more about electromagnetism, though.
"The national fusion programs progressed well during the Cold War because of fierce international competition. They have stopped moving forward in the late 1980s because the decision to consolidate them all into a single global project, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), removed all stimulus for action. Indeed, it too, nearly a quarter century for the bureaucrats in charge of ITER to manage to reach a consensus in 2010 on where tu put it, and it will be another quarter century before the machine even attempts to reach thermonuclear ignition in 2035"