But having a on-chip memory removes my ability to swap the hardware when it breaks. Right now I can just remove* and put a new RAM for fairly cheap. Isn't that a good thing? I personally prefer modularity over Single Board computers. Or is making things modular no longer worth today?
I was having some unexpected restart issues with my one of my laptops (lenovo), which was at the time under warranty. Lenovo just swapped my whole board (Remember this is everything except the keyboard, screen and battery, so CPU + Power supply + RAM + motherboard) instead of bothering to isolate the issue. Ofcourse at the time I appreciated getting a new machine because it was covered under warranty, but it makes me uncomfortable that someone might end up paying for the complete board when say the issue was just with the power supply.
* Assuming the Ram isn't soldered on, which in the current state is often in case of laptops.
SOC is probably the pulse of the future, especially once we reach the point where game CGI is virtually indistinguishable from reality.
I'm sure the idea of connecting multiple things to your computer (like ram, graphics cards, storage, etc.) to increase its functionality will eventually be reduced away to maybe 2 or 3 pieces total, for instance a phone & some biometric sensors that are used to interact with it.
If wattage draw is low enough the whole thing could probably run on a supercapacitor and need a moments charge every couple of hours to stay up and running.
I was having some unexpected restart issues with my one of my laptops (lenovo), which was at the time under warranty. Lenovo just swapped my whole board (Remember this is everything except the keyboard, screen and battery, so CPU + Power supply + RAM + motherboard) instead of bothering to isolate the issue. Ofcourse at the time I appreciated getting a new machine because it was covered under warranty, but it makes me uncomfortable that someone might end up paying for the complete board when say the issue was just with the power supply.
* Assuming the Ram isn't soldered on, which in the current state is often in case of laptops.