[jjindev]

Apple illustrates a segmentation rather than a convergence. Tablet, notebook, and workstation are breaking into distinct bands of performance. In their world a tablet is for a guy who wants a couple cores (with long battery life), notebooks are for people want a few cores (with moderate battery life) and workstations are for people want lots of cores (the electric bill be damned).

In the PC market there is more overlap, with pretty solid $700 minitowers, but again the minitowers imply you will pay for the electricity and performance with a cost in size and portability.

Long term ... sure maybe a 12 core tablet is possible, but that is really long term IMO.

[phaus]

The device I envision is definitely a long-term prospect. That's why I used the word "eventually."

I'm not saying that a perfect hybrid will exist in the next five, or even ten years. I'm just saying that it will, because it's the obvious direction to go in.

Right now, creating such a device requires a significant amount of compromise, but in the future it may not.

The idea that such a device can't exist because all previous attempts have failed strikes me as short-sighted.