On the flip side, a lot of those old through-hole memory chips have failed. I'm not sure what the mechanism of action is, but it likely leads back to some kind of (at the time unknown) manufacturing defect. Every new generation requires higher purity and better quality control (because those tiny transistors are less tolerant of defects). If we optimized for longevity rather than flops per dollar or per watt, we would likely keep making the same hardware for a very long time, optimizing the process along the way and learning about the pitfalls. Maybe you can see such things in the military or industrial computing spaces.

It is when we peak in nanometers too.