This trend (if it's actually happening) is a symptom of the death of Moore's law. When Moore's law was operating in full swing, it would rarely make sense to build your own chip using open source. In the time that you could design and build your chip, general processors would have doubled in speed and you'd be better off waiting for the general processor.
Here are a few predictions, some of which have already occurred, that may result due to the death of Moore's law:
Already Happening:
- More custom chips (squeezing the last bit of performance)
- More reliance on the cloud, to push off processing power where there are more economies of scale
- The rise of traditionally "second tier" processor manufacturers (e.g., AMD, ARM) to be head-to-head with traditional leaders (e.g., Intel).
- A greater amount of chip manufacturers R&D dollars spent to each dollar of revenue.
Starting to Happen
- China and developing countries catching up with chip technology (when the leaders are no longer growing exponentially, it's easier to catch up)
- Governments imposing their will on chip developers (when there is less competition over performance, other factors like trust and national origin will start mattering)
- Trade secret theft, i.e., in the past if you stole Intel's designs, you would get one good chip, but that theft would be obsolete in 18 months. Now, it gives you a much longer advantage.
- An societal shift from utility to branding, i.e., as all goods start becoming equal, branding is the main differentiation.
- Living standards catching up to western and U.S. standards.
Further Afield:
- No significant technological improvements for decades.
- Stagnant per-worker/capita productivity.
- Economic growth becoming far more tied to population than individual productivity.
- Economies/governments fighting to increase their population (e.g., through legal immigration or by force).
- Government's power and control becoming based more on population rather than ideals or innovation (e.g., China).
- More monopolies ... in a dynamic and innovative society, a small smart company can defeat a larger slower one. In a stagnant society, that won't work and the competitive advantage can only be obtained by consolidation and economies of scale.
- Social unrest ... in an exponentially growing society, there is room for every generation to become wealthier than their parents, but in a flat society, on average half will become richer and half will become poorer.
I would argue there is more to an economy than processor speeds or price of transistors e.g. hardware security, software security, data integration, expansion of communication capabilities, not to mention other industries (biotech, transportation, energy), etc.
Although I must admit that I do not know how much the increase in modern hardware capabilities contributes to the productivity of the economy.
I disagree with your statement regarding significant future discoveries, as that is something that is very hard to predict.
If CPU and computer hardware become commodity, it would certainly be a new era of tinkering that is upon us. Perhaps more pressing problems than computational power f CPUs and transistor cost will then be attacked.
> there is more to an economy that processor speeds ... I frankly do not know how much increase in modern hardware capabilities contributes to the productivity of the economy.
In industrial times, you would be right. However since the "information revolution", a huge amount of productivity gains can be directly attributable to transistors. Sure it started with improving simple calculators, but then came spreadsheets, industrial CAD models, instantaneous global communication, remote teams, global branding and a whole lot more.
In fact, it's pretty fair to say, that nearly every standard of living improvement in western countries since roughly 1980 can be attributable to the transistor.
> In fact, it's pretty fair to say, that nearly every standard of living improvement in western countries since roughly 1980 can be attributable to the transistor.
Very interesting statement.
Out of cusiosity, is there any way you could back it up e.g. chemical or biological research was not very digital for a long time after the 1980s. Of course, digitization was transformative in the end of the 90s and beginning of the 2000s, and it seems to me that it is just now where we are in that exponential growth of exploiting IC technology.
I quickly checked your impressive background, and I guess you have seen a lot of the IC sector in terms of innovation and technology. I believe that you are making a sound call here.
At the end, everything is intertwined. Advances in material science go back to IC design and production, and vice versa.
Indeed performance has become less important since it reached some kind of plateau for the moment. So things that were secondary in the past like stability, security and customizability become more important, that's were Open Source chips come in. When buying a new computer or Smartphone, there are now plenty of startups selling decent devices that are effectively on par with brand laptops. When Linux is of interest, it's just a matter of time until it becomes available on the particular configuration.
Honestly, I therefore think the reverse development will further continue. Big brands will have an even harder time convincing people to buy their devices. Of course the economy might become more stagnant, on the other hand people might have to work less and be able to invest more time into other ideas - even if those aren't that profitable.
Is it worth adding that specific applications (High Frequency Trading, Crypto Mining, on-chip support for things like 5G) and the increased focus on special factors they bring (like latency and energy efficiency) mean general-purpose PUs are less and less attractive? I guess that is the other side of the coin of the death of Moores law...
Here are a few predictions, some of which have already occurred, that may result due to the death of Moore's law:
Already Happening:
- More custom chips (squeezing the last bit of performance)
- More reliance on the cloud, to push off processing power where there are more economies of scale
- The rise of traditionally "second tier" processor manufacturers (e.g., AMD, ARM) to be head-to-head with traditional leaders (e.g., Intel).
- A greater amount of chip manufacturers R&D dollars spent to each dollar of revenue.
Starting to Happen
- China and developing countries catching up with chip technology (when the leaders are no longer growing exponentially, it's easier to catch up)
- Governments imposing their will on chip developers (when there is less competition over performance, other factors like trust and national origin will start mattering)
- Trade secret theft, i.e., in the past if you stole Intel's designs, you would get one good chip, but that theft would be obsolete in 18 months. Now, it gives you a much longer advantage.
- An societal shift from utility to branding, i.e., as all goods start becoming equal, branding is the main differentiation.
- Living standards catching up to western and U.S. standards.
Further Afield:
- No significant technological improvements for decades.
- Stagnant per-worker/capita productivity.
- Economic growth becoming far more tied to population than individual productivity.
- Economies/governments fighting to increase their population (e.g., through legal immigration or by force).
- Government's power and control becoming based more on population rather than ideals or innovation (e.g., China).
- More monopolies ... in a dynamic and innovative society, a small smart company can defeat a larger slower one. In a stagnant society, that won't work and the competitive advantage can only be obtained by consolidation and economies of scale.
- Social unrest ... in an exponentially growing society, there is room for every generation to become wealthier than their parents, but in a flat society, on average half will become richer and half will become poorer.