Hardware crisis

Decades ago there was a lot of talk about software crisis. Now sometimes I have the feeling that we have a hardware crisis.  It seems that - with some notable exceptions - nobody is developing hardware. Yes I know that every year new microprocessors arrive, graphic chips are being developed and new computers produced, but there is no change in architecture or design approach. The PCs have the same architecture, servers too. Only the new staff is put into the old bottle. Just a couple of companies - like Apple, IBM (and SUN before) show real architecture innovation. What should be a real innovation in HW? I have no idea. But there are things I would like to see.

- Low cost and long battery life netbooks.  For me a portable device which lets me write documents, use excel tables, e-mail and browse the Internet would be a real work tool. I don't need flashy graphics, extreme processing power, huge hard disk, lot of peripherals and videos for my work. I could imagine a color eInk device in an ultra thin and light laptop case with keyboard and a very limited set of ports. (Something like a kind of “Kindle netbook”).

- Cloud computing servers. I understand Google using commodity servers but there should be another way.  Why we can't have a water cooled (the hot water should be used e.g. for heating rooms) servers, with most of the Internet protocol in hardware, shared in-memory databases and chips containing hundreds of simple, low cost processing cores where each one is dedicated to a single thread.  It could bring superior cloud computing performance at a small place. 

- New generation PCs.  As I have written in an earlier post;  PCs could be more innovative.

- Universal mobile. Mobile phones are the most widespread personal computing devices. I expect they will step by step take over a lot of tasks which we do now with computers and turn into some kind of universal personal assistant. I dream of a device which synchronizes the information and communication needs at work (e.g. has my calendar, contacts, documents every time synchronized whoever I'm) during travel (helps me with navigation and knows my favorite radio programs,...) and home. I get full access to all valid information in context wherever I’m. I hope that Nokia will find its innovative self and come up with new breakthrough products.