The main moat here is VRAM, not raw compute power.

So... Four years? The 1080 launched in 2016, and the 3070 launched in 2020, for $100 cheaper — the launch price of the 1080 was $699, and the 3070 was $599. The 3070 easily trounced the 1080 in benchmarks.

The 3060 effectively matched a 1080 at $329 in 2021 (and has 50% more VRAM at 12GB instead of the 1080's 8GB), so call it five years if the 3070 isn't mid-range enough.

The 3060 Ti launched in 2022 at $399 and handily beat the 1080 on benchmarks, so call it six years if you want the midrange card to beat (not just match) the previous top-of-the-line card, and if a *70 card doesn't count as midrange enough. Less than a decade still seems like a reasonable claim for a midrange card to beat a top-of-the-line card.

are you conveniently forgetting how none of those cards were actually available for consumers to buy

The 1080 was impossible to buy at launch too and was sold out for months. And the 3060 is easy to buy!

The 3060 is easy to buy NOW, since cryptomining has crashed, and the 40x0 GPUs have become available (though mostly still above MSRP).

The 3060 was only readily available quite recently, so it's about 6 years from ready availability of the 1080 at $600 to 3060.

Taking 6 years to double the perf/$ implies that it would take ~42 years for a $40000 H100 to reach mid-range levels. Assuming scaling, particularly VRAM, holds.

And plus it would be getting really close to the Landauer limit by that point.