How would you rebuild the computer from the ground up?
We've evolved directly from a system designed in the 70s, when we had no idea what we'd want, need, or be able to do in 2017.
Forget all the inertia for a second, and imagine you've got infinite resources at hand.
How might you do it differently? Wipe the slate clean and remake everything – simpler, faster, easier, or to open up avenues that just aren't feasible to go down today.
Do you work in a problem domain where we're especially held back, by the hardware itself, or its complexity?
A couple of related links:
Gary Bernhardt talks about speedups from ditching virtual memory (at least partially)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605687
Can programming be liberated from the Von Neumann bottleneck?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159792
Tyranny of the clock
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995966
Rex
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12155561
Mill
https://millcomputing.com/