The hardware industry is one that never stops moving, but generally it always does so step by step and little by little, and we have not seen too many revolutions that we can say have changed the hardware industry . So and put to it, we are going to allow ourselves to dream a little to imagine what are the next revolutions in the world of hardware that we can expect for the future. Do you want to take this trip with us?
We can say that when SSDs appeared they were a real revolution in the PC hardware industry, because we went from high-speed, noise and low-speed mechanical hard drives to much faster, quieter, smaller, and no solid-state devices. they get warm. In fact, today putting an SSD on an old PC is the best hardware update you can do to improve its performance.
But what does the future hold for us?
RAM, one of the hardware revolutions?
Much is said about the DDR5 RAM that is about to arrive, and it is amazing how it will improve performance compared to the current DDR4 because it improves capacity while reducing voltage, offering transfers of up to 8400 Mbps. But is this a revolution in the industry?
The answer is no. DDR5 RAM is an evolution with respect to DDR4, but it is not a revolution since we will essentially have the same as we have so far, but more efficient and faster. A revolution, however, would be the phase change memories that have been in development for many years and that will completely change the concept of RAM that we have so far, or if there comes a time when we could use HBM memory as RAM to the processor.
Solid state batteries
This type of batteries is also in development, and it is planned that by 2022 they already have commercial models of them (at least Toyota, which wants to implement them in its electric cars). This type of battery is an evolution of what we know of lithium ion, but with the difference that while in current batteries lithium is solidifying and the useful life of the battery ends, in solid state this it does not happen and theoretically they are eternal . Furthermore, due to their solid state, they are also safer .
Of course, this will start in cars but it will end in all devices, such as laptops or smartphones, so it will undoubtedly be a real revolution in hardware.
Quantum processors are the future of hardware
There is also a lot of talk about computers equipped with quantum processors , which have been postulated for five years as the future of computational computing. This type of computer handles qubits instead of bits, which allows the process capacity of the equipment to be taken much further, adding a new dimension to the calculations.
However, today they are unfeasible in an extended environment because until now researchers have failed to create reliable environments that are viable beyond industrial environments (vacuum chambers).
This technology continues and will continue to be developed because it continues to be considered as the future, and indeed there will come a time when it represents the greatest hardware revolution that has ever existed … but unfortunately we are still a long way from this happening. The most optimistic researchers date a viable, reliable, and widespread use of this technology for at least 50 years .
Molecular hardware, is it the solution to everything?
Another of the technologies that are postulated to become one of the biggest revolutions in the hardware world is known as molecular hardware . Manufacturers have long faced the challenge of cramming as many transistors into smaller and smaller spaces as possible, so what we’re talking about is hardware the size of water molecules, about 0.275 nanometers .
Although really interesting advances have been made in this technology, researchers have still encountered a wall that until now seems insurmountable: when dealing with objects of an atomic or molecular level, it is unstable . In practical terms, they have managed to create molecular level transistors, they are already a reality, but the problem is that their life expectancy is just three hours, so it is not feasible to create products with that.
Like quantum computers, molecular hardware is still in development and is considered to represent another revolution in the hardware world, as the density of processors would be greatly increased, delivering much higher performance with lower power consumption and less heat generated. According to the researchers, we are still a long way from making this revolution a reality.
Artificial Intelligence will revolutionize hardware
We have been talking about Artificial Intelligence for decades, especially in science fiction movies. Making an elementary summary, Artificial Intelligence consists of creating machines capable not only of thinking, but also of learning for themselves. Today they are already used in systems that we use on a daily basis, as search engines that learn from our habits, although this is rather Machine Learning , which is the previous step.
But the real revolution that Artificial Intelligence would cause in terms of hardware should go one step further. We are no longer talking about robots, androids, and other science-fiction concepts, or the famous “Skynet” mind from the Terminator movies. We talk about that in the end human knowledge has certain limitations, basically for the life time we have, but that of machines technically has no limits.
This means that once Artificial Intelligence, the real one, is a reality, they could use all the knowledge that humanity has been storing for millennia to create innovations that we never even imagined. In fact – and this is not science fiction – it is one of the hopes that scientists have to develop interstellar travel.
