The potential impact is game-changing. I really wonder how this is going to shape where investments in IT go.
Hopefully we'll start to see even more emphasis on optimisation, possibly revived interest in Asm while compilers catch up... and then realise just how efficient software can really be.
The developer mindset needs to change as well. I seldom here people wondering about the sheer computing power of the systems they use.
Many developers also seem to get a kick out of building complex systems (with (most of the time too) many abstraction layers burning cpu cycles) - because they seem to believe building complex things somehow means having control over complexity - but I'm not sure about that.
I wish we had a better, higher level, cross-platform access to SIMD.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
Hence why the explosion in IoT nowadays, that is nothing new. Everyone with some EE background has been playing with microcontrolers since the early 2000.
However we have reached a point where to make such tiny computers, more powerful than any of my PCs at the university, is ridiculously cheap.
A computer like the Arduino used to cost more than 100 euros back in the day, now I can buy one for 5 euros and who cares if it burns.
On the other side of the spectrum we have CPUs like the Nvidia Titan X, which 99% of the computing population can barely make it get out of idle state.
So unless one is an heavy gamer, doing Fintech, VR or AI research there is hardly anything new processors can offer over the existing computing workloads.
So I guess it isn't stop shrinking as such, but also if it will still be economically viable to continue that route until a new computing paradigm emerges (e.g. Quantum or whatever)