During the 1990s (and for some years before and after) we got 'Dennard scaling'. The frequency of processors tended to increase exponentially, too, and featured prominently in advertising and branding.

I suspect many people conflated Dennard scaling with Moore's law and the demise of Dennard scaling is what contributes to the popular imagination that Moore's law is dead: frequencies of processors have essentially stagnated.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling