Michael J. Flynn - Computer Architecture: The Road Ahead

Continuing progress in the scaling of the Silicon technology enables continuing product evolution. But in addition to simple extension of current products, several shifts in design emphasis are occurring. In the first shift more emphasis is placed on lowering power and maintaining performance by increased concurrency (area). Power can be reduced by upwards to a factor of one million times from current power levels. In a second shift increased circuit density enables entire systems (computer, controllers, memory and communications support) to be integrated on a chip. These shifts may enable wearable (watch type) and other novel system oriented devices. As chip costs fall design costs, testing and interconnections dominate; wireless/optical interconnections become all the more important.