Even if this is of course correct, the "hardware upgrading process" for the miners should be in general a gradual process. Not all farms will upgrade their gears at the same time, not even in the same year. And that's in my opinion the explanation that the hashrate increase looks "gradual".

Let's see how much can be explained by Moore's law with a short calculation:

- Antminer A19 (2021): 95-110 TH/s
- Antminer A21 (2024): 200 TH/s

So we have roughly a duplication in 3 years. The hashrate however tripled in this time (from 110-150 Eh/s to 500 Eh/s), so Moore's Law explains about two thirds of the hashrate growth probably.

Of course however the other big factor is the Bitcoin price increase, but the impact on miner profitability is not 1:1 as you always have to take into account the previous difficulty increases as well (that's the reason why some talk about "production costs" of Bitcoins, even if I strongly disagree calling it that way ...). And it's a bit difficult to calculate the impact due to the cyclic price behaviour. In early 2021 the price was still much lower than today, in mid-2021 and late-2021 the price spiked to similar values than now, but with a big "valley" of 35-50k in mid-2021, and in 2022 it fell drastically again.

Fully agree here