Same as with "peak oil" then. Its not that we run out of physically extractable oil, but that the cost of doing so will curtail our current usage of the substance.
Its pretty much the inverse of the Jevon paradox (or maybe that everything has a bell curve, and we are so focused on the left half we forget its mirror on the right).
Actually, people are looking forward to a long period where a certain node, "20" something nm (not Intel's 20 something), becomes so standard that economies of scale result in it being the one most entities use for their designs, especially non-mobile or otherwise seriously power constrained.
I gather we're already sort of there, with wafer costs in the $5,000 or so range, the trick is of course to limit the NRE to something you can afford. The lowRISC project is going this route, I learned much of this starting from their future production plans.
Its pretty much the inverse of the Jevon paradox (or maybe that everything has a bell curve, and we are so focused on the left half we forget its mirror on the right).