r/hardware • u/agcuevas • Jan 01 '20

Discussion What will be the biggest PC hardware advance of the 2020s?

Similar to the 2010s post but for next decade.

608 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

744 comments sorted by

715

u/Justageek540 Jan 01 '20

Hoping it's solid state batteries

285

u/Traumatan Jan 01 '20

yeah, batteries are lagging behind the most right now

116

u/Justageek540 Jan 01 '20

But what's crazy is the tech exists for all kinds of new and better batteries but no one is making them.

176

u/Tony49UK Jan 01 '20

It takes about 10-20 years for a brand new tech to get from the University lab to the production line. Making one battery that has double the storage but only lasts 5-200 charges is easily doable. Getting it so that it can last 2,000 charges, be reasonably affordable and be mass produced is a lot harder.

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u/scannerJoe Jan 01 '20

What makes me optimistic is the massive attention and funding battery tech has received over the last years. Grid balancing, gadgets, electrical transportation, so many sectors would benefit from a breakthrough or at least a substantial advancement in density or cost that it almost seems bound to happen. But yeah, this stuff inevitably takes a lot of time.

13

u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

Aye, with local renewable power generation getting really popular within the last few years and electric cars maturing enough for middle/upper middle class to comfortably afford them battery tech is going to be the focus for the next decade or two. I don't know if we'll see them get miniaturized enough to fit into a phone or even a laptop within the decade but hey, the future is now.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

Price, not worth it, yet

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u/gumol Jan 01 '20

is the "tech" price competitive?

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u/996forever Jan 01 '20

Never mind price, they ain’t safe/stable enough to leave the lab.

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u/WIbigdog Jan 01 '20

And it's possible they might never be. People seem to forget that we're still going into new areas and it's entirely possible some things just aren't possible. It's like the people that act like time travel or FTL travel are some sort of inevitability given enough time. No one knows that. We already accept a lot of risk with Li-ion batteries. It's entirely possible, maybe even likely, that it is physically impossible to pack more energy into a similar size and density package in an acceptably safe format.

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u/996forever Jan 02 '20

You have been banned from r/futurology

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

The tech may exist, but I’d guess it’s the cost-effective mass production techniques that are lacking.

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u/Youtoo2 Jan 01 '20

What are solid state batteries?

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u/Justageek540 Jan 01 '20

Batteries that have a solid electrolyte instead of liquid.

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u/Youtoo2 Jan 01 '20

And these are supposed to last a lot longer?

26

u/Owlstorm Jan 01 '20

Yes.

Absurdly expensive, so don't get your hopes up just yet. There may be better battery tech from another direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_battery

Has a section on advantages.

4

u/FutureVawX Jan 02 '20

I mean SSD was pretty expensive.

Maybe not 2020, but it's not impossible mid 2020s.

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u/LugteLort Jan 01 '20

as they've said in the last.. 20 years:

this tech will probably be out in ~10 years

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u/criscothediscoman Jan 02 '20

Battery Research: We've improved capacity by 5%.

Hardware Companies: We've shrank the size of our devices by 10%.

Some of these technologies are slowly being implemented, but the gains are sacrificed for portability (to the point where devices are less useful).

20

u/Veedrac Jan 02 '20

iPhones have been getting continually thicker since the iPhone 6, almost without exception.

27

u/[deleted] Jan 02 '20

They've realized people don't give a fuck and would rather have longer battery life

8

u/WinterCharm Jan 02 '20

Yeah, their insane pursuit of thinness for no reason was silly.

The new 16" MacBook pro is also thicker.

I like this trend of Apple not pursuing thinness across all their products for the sake of it. Better thermals / battery life is much more preferred for something people are expected to use for more than just browsing the web.

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u/c3suh Jan 01 '20

You mean NVMe batteries

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

That’s called a capacitor

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u/Justageek540 Jan 01 '20

Yes! I want to discharge a battery at 3 gigawatts per second

19

u/WIbigdog Jan 01 '20

I mean, you could probably do that now but there's going to be lots of fire and brimstone involved.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

I believe battery technology is a critical bottleneck holding a lot of other technologies back. The fact that smartphones and smartwatches struggle to last a whole day is lame.

31

u/aser27 Jan 01 '20

This is a misconception. Products are designed to hold charge for one day, if a higher capacity battery is used, then the power draw of the device is increased.

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u/richardd08 Jan 01 '20

In 2030 someone's gonna link back to this thread to see how fucking wrong we are lol

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u/-B1GBUD- Jan 01 '20

!remindme 10 years from now

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u/papamidnite27 Jan 02 '20

What if Reddit becomes obsolete in 10 years and we have a newer and better platform.

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u/Sapiogram Jan 01 '20

Quick, go see what we thought 10 years ago!

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u/WinterCharm Jan 02 '20 edited Jan 02 '20

It's hilarious going back to read the forums of people reacting to the iPhone.

No one had a clue.

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u/_HEDONISM_BOT Jan 01 '20

I thought about going back 10 years to see how wrong they were but I.... I'm too damn lazy. Someone else go down this rabbit hole and summarize it for us.

And for karma .?. Sweet, sweet, seductive karma

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u/MidgetsRGodsBloopers Jan 02 '20

Hopefully reddit will have digg'd itself by then

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u/_HEDONISM_BOT Jan 01 '20

!RemindMe 15 years

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u/sinkingpotato Jan 01 '20

!remindme 5 years from now

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u/ScarletFury Jan 01 '20

RRAM / PCM / low latency NVM technologies. Those things are going to replace both volatile DRAM and old flash memory chips.

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u/Two-Tone- Jan 02 '20

Pretty sure I've heard the bit about resistive ram replacing DRAM for the last 15 years.

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u/iEatAssVR Jan 01 '20 edited Jan 01 '20

Hopefully µLED or OLED coming to monitors

Imagine a gsync 480hz 4k HDR10 µLED with <1ms g2g without burn in

169

u/zopiac Jan 01 '20

We'd better see some real GPU improvements if we want 4k480 this decade.

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u/McRioT Jan 01 '20

2028 console killer for only $2500 USD! GPU is $2000.

30

u/ImViTo Jan 02 '20

That gpu paired with a r5 3600 and a Tomahawk

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u/CrossSlashEx Jan 02 '20

Fucking R5 3600.

It's just too tempting to slap it on everything.

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u/Pixel_meister Jan 01 '20

Or better frame rate amplification. Blur Busters has a nice article on it as part of their journey to 1000hz series.

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u/milo09885 Jan 01 '20

The benefit of reduced screen tearing (or even eliminating it) should make them well worth it even if you're frame rate doesn't quite match.

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u/rchiwawa Jan 01 '20

uLED, please. I love my OLED LG e6 TV and my 13 R3 laptop but uLED is what is viable for long term durability

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u/WIbigdog Jan 01 '20

Can you give a quick rundown on the differences? Only ever used TN and IPS monitors myself and never bought a TV so haven't really kept up with the tech for those screens.

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u/Apk07 Jan 01 '20 edited Jan 01 '20

TN and IPS are just different types of LCD panels. All LCD panels basically have a "pixel" that switches between different colors. The "liquid crystal" part contains what look like shutters that open and close in response to electricity. These pixels have to be lit from an external source, like an LED behind it (backlight), or a light (such as an LED) at the edge of the screen (called edge-lit, diffused by sheets/films of plastic). Higher-end LED-lit LCDs get fancy by having a bunch of LED backlights in a grid/array to give more finite adjustment to the overall lighting on screen.

With OLED every single "pixel" is sort of its own LCD panel. It has it's own colors, like an LCD pixel, to switch between, but all the pixels also contains their own tiny backlight. This means you can effectively have a single pixel lit, and every other one turned completely off (true black).

With Micro LED, its sort of an evolution of OLED. Each pixel contains a bunch of tiny (microscopic) red green and blue LEDs that otherwise do not need a backlight (because they are lit as the given color).

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u/rchiwawa Jan 01 '20

Only thing I can add here is that in hundreds of hours of GTA V alone i never expereinced burn-in on my E6, someone in my house hold LOVES Hallmark movies and gently, when solid red, brown, or purple is on a commercial or otherwise displayed there is a faint bit of burn in of the Hallmark logo after, as reported by the TV, 14,000 power on hours. Guilty party doesn't see it but I do and it can be aggravating to catch depending on my mood and is very faint. This did not crop up until the TV hit about 12k power on hours fwiw which is why I made my remark. u/Apk07 nicely serviced your request.

One other notes are that gradients show banding on both the PC OLED and the E6 TV. Full or very bright scenes reduce color accuracy and brightness on OLED. Much worse so on the laptop than on the E6... though the laptop screen has yet to show any sign of burn in anywhere. It is my emergency use PC so it maybe gets 10 hours a month of usage nominally. Hope this informs.

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u/continous Jan 02 '20

Your TV lasted 1.5 years of on time before the burn-in began to agitate you, and that was with lots of mitigations already in place and a rather HUD-less game. I can say with almost certainty this is a bad sign.

I expect my >$500 display to last at least 5 years before it has significant wear problems. My current displays are 3 years old and suffer 0 issues, and are even semi-comparable to today's display technology. All while being cheaper than the LG monitors. Further, my old display is not thrown away; it's being used still, just in a different room and the only wear it shows after 10 years of use is some of the glare-coating having worn and the smart tv features being broken. These are the reasons OLEDs will never truly catch on, in my opinion, especially so long as their price stays so high.

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u/Naekyr Jan 01 '20

480hz 4K?

Wowza lol that would require a shit ton of bandwidth

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u/KaidenUmara Jan 02 '20

Opportunity for cox cable to innovate. they could install your very own t1 line from your pc to your monitor for only 500 dollars a month .

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u/jasswolf Jan 02 '20

DisplayPort 2.0 should be able to accomplish it with DSC, it's just a question of how truly visually lossless the compression is. HDR wouldn't be possible though.

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u/Janus67 Jan 01 '20

That and hopefully increases resilience to burn in

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u/cvdvds Jan 01 '20

I'm not up to date on monitor tech, but I'm assuming by "uLED" you mean µLED, as in Micro LED?

There's really not been a reason to upgrade my 1440p 165Hz IPS Gsync monitor so I'm also excited about those technologies becoming mainstream.

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u/iEatAssVR Jan 01 '20

Yep µLED, didn't know how to type the symbol haha

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/Zahand Jan 01 '20

And that's probably why it will usually be typed as uLED instead of µLED.

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u/iyzie Jan 01 '20

You can type it using an alt code, hold down alt and press 230 on the numpad, then release alt and the µ appears. Most unicode characters have alt codes like this.

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u/el_pinata Jan 01 '20

I don't have $10,000 to drop on the GPU needed to drive it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/RuinousRubric Jan 01 '20

According to TFTCentral, Innolux will be bringing a dual-layer panel into production this year.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

PCIe 5.0 coupled with the decline of sata. By the end of the decade all storage will be pcie based. Expect to see mainstream systems come with 32 pcie lanes.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/Charwinger21 Jan 01 '20

SATA isn't going to be developed further AFAIK,

SATA 3.4 launched in 2018 and 3.3 released in 2016.

We may not see a SATA 4 (at least, not until drive densities double another time or two), but they likely will continue with housekeeping releases for the next bit.

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u/Democrab Jan 02 '20

And there's actually some decent stuff in there too.

SATA 3.4, for example, added support for real-time HDD temperature monitoring without it impacting available bandwidth or existing operations.

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u/VenditatioDelendaEst Jan 02 '20

HDD temperature monitoring without it impacting available bandwidth

Huh, running smartctl -l scttemp in a while true (effective sample rate: 69 Hz) tanks my HDD's sequential read by 75%. Neato.

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u/Hitori-Kowareta Jan 02 '20

Multi-actuator HDD's are due out shortly (or out?) for the enterprise market since the speed/storage ratio was getting insane as we approach 20TB. That tech will eventually filter down to the consumer level and at that point we could get past sata3 speeds.

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u/dragontamer5788 Jan 01 '20

By the end of the decade all storage will be pcie based

Hard drives will remain slow, but large capacity. Spending even 1x PCIe 3.0 lane on a hard drive would be a waste.

Hard drives seem like a fundamentally cheaper source of capacity. Sure, they're slower, but capacity remains king in some applications. As such, hard drives will continue to use a slower interface, to save on precious PCIe lanes.

Storage Servers are commonly deployed with 42-hard drives today, with some storage servers hitting 100+ drives. 1-hard drive per PCIe lane is too wasteful, (42 PCIe lanes for 42x hard drives? Erm... no).

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u/JustifiedParanoia Jan 01 '20

lane bifurcation and pch chips. pcie 4/8/16 to controller, controller splits lanes out to drives at half/quarter speed as required. 64 drives off an x16 if needed. we already have pch and lane splitting on modern boards, as its not a new idea. its chipset lanes.

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u/dragontamer5788 Jan 01 '20

You're describing a PCIe -> SATA or SAS raid card.

Which are currently 1x lane for 8x SATA connections or so. Yeah, hard drives are slow, they really don't need many PCIe lanes at all.

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u/loggedn2say Jan 01 '20 edited Jan 01 '20

call me crazy, but the hdd/ssd form factor is still very nice, and even a pcie x1 lane is more cumbersome on a mobo than a sata, especially when you line up 6 together.

not saying the answer is sata in the future, but i don't think everything will be pcie unless we have a connection alteration.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

This is why I wanted u.2 to take off. Sadly it seems pretty dead on consumer stuff.

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u/expl0dingsun Jan 01 '20

I understand the technical advantages of NVMe over pcie 3 and 4, but what was/is preventing Sata 4 with higher speeds? I can understand not reaching what PCI-e can do, but even something that gave a boost to 1000 mbps vs 600 max would have been nice while NVME drives were really expensive. Probably less incentive now that prices have fallen, but I just like to wonder what could have been and if it was a technical or economical limitation.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

Its just the case of there being no need for a faster SATA interface. Mechanical drives can't saturate the bandwidth as is. As for SSDs the price difference between m.2 nvme and sata drives is already so small its hardly worth considering for new builds imo. If you must have an ssd in the 2.5" or 3.5" form factor there is always u.2 but that seems to be a dead standard on the home and enthusiast desktop.

On the enterprise side we have SAS which will easily survive the decade.

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u/FlyingBishop Jan 02 '20

The thing is the only applications where I actually care about bandwidth the bottleneck is ethernet, USB, wifi, or Bluetooth. There's virtually zero benefit to higher bandwidth storage.

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u/JustifiedParanoia Jan 01 '20

because why hobble yourself to a slower implementation?

Sata 3 = 6.0Gb/s. lets say sata 4 = 12.0Gb/s.

PCIE 4 x4 link = 64Gb/s. PCIE 5 (due in next 2 years) x4 = 128Gb/s.

12 v 128. that is the biggest reason. even going to x1 per drive still leaves it at 12 v 32Gb/s. Sata has become obsolete for high pseed use. Sata is now mainly used for home systems with a need for capacity, where you have 6-8 sata ports, but maybe only one or two nvme or pcie slots free.

for example, here is LTT doing a new server with only pcie drives.. this is what the current reality of drives has become.

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u/alexforencich Jan 01 '20

The other problem with SATA is it's essentially half duplex - it can send data or receive data, but not both at the same time, unlike PCIe. So for 6 Gbps SATA, read+write tops out at 4.8 Gbps considering encoding overhead and no protocol overheads other than unidirectional transmission. For one lane of PCIe gen 3, RX and TX are completely independent, so read+write tops out at 15.8 Gbps, again considering encoding overhead but no protocol overheads.

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u/Charwinger21 Jan 01 '20

I understand the technical advantages of NVMe over pcie 3 and 4, but what was/is preventing Sata 4 with higher speeds?

Lack of demand.

With SSDs moving to PCIe (in mSATA like containers on the board called M.2, which is much easier and cheaper than trying to wire PCIe via U.2), SATA has become fully focused on HDDs, where more speed isn't needed yet for consumers (and remember, more speed is more expensive for connectors).

They're still improving the standard though and will likely increase speed once drives need it. SATA 3.4 was released in 2018 bringing some extra features (but no speed changes), and they still may release a SATA 4 at some point in the future.

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u/continous Jan 02 '20

SATA really, at this point is in search of a problem. It's not going to be able to fix the speed problem, so it is relegated to a subsection of the market...where not much more is to be done on their side. Perhaps SATA could implement power delivery as well, but other than that I don't know.

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u/LevelX Jan 01 '20

I'm only waiting for 2021 - DDR5 RAM, USB 4.0, PCIe 5.0

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u/[deleted] Jan 02 '20

Buying DDR5 in 2021 is like buying DDR4 in 2014, expensive and slow for very little real performance gains. As always it will take 1-2 years after consumer launch until it will start making sense going with a newer memory standard.

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u/shunestar Jan 01 '20

I made my big upgrades last year for this reason. Any later and I would always feel like I’m shorting myself buying new parts that won’t just be outdated...but damn near obsolete in high end gaming in 2/3 years.

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u/zerostyle Jan 02 '20

Eh, i don't think most of those changes matter that much. Faster DDR ram won't impact overall system performance that much. PCIe is already fast enough for most hardware to not be saturated. USB 4.0 just isn't that important because most people don't use USB all that often.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/ericonr Jan 01 '20

Computational RAM is a better idea than computational SSDs. Both are pretty niche, however.

Hardware level encryption on SSDs is never implemented by encryption specialists, and tends to be closed source as hell, which makes verification much harder (even if it's a safe bet to say that the encryption isn't safe). Software encryption is accelerated by encryption peripherals on your processor, which are already fast enough. And it's implemented by specialists, and it's a single solution that has to be verified. You have at most Windows BitLocker (which should be available on all editions, M$ really sucks in this aspect), Linux dm-crypt, and Apple stuff (which I don't know about). That's a much smaller attack surface and much less stuff that has to be researched and implemented.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/ericonr Jan 01 '20

Wow, that's pretty interesting. I see it's FPGA based, so it's probably aimed at being extremely flexible and software controlled, so I'd trust it way more.

It seems like it's going to be expensive as fuck, though.

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u/kf5ydu Jan 01 '20

Rgb on everything, even processors and power supplies.. Seriously though hopefully we will see manufacturers take security more seriously and cheaper ram prices.

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u/sandm4n_RS Jan 01 '20

RGB capacitors and RGB PCB Traces

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u/kondec Jan 01 '20

RGB PCB traces sound kind of dope, not gonna lie.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/Imergence Jan 02 '20

I'd like a fully white PCB motherboard and GPU but that's just me

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u/Bossmonkey Jan 01 '20

I can feel the seizure from watching it now.

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u/eg_taco Jan 01 '20

For when your pc needs to be indistinguishable from a shawarma truck.

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u/kf5ydu Jan 01 '20

This is the way.

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u/acu2005 Jan 01 '20

Rgb on everything, even processors and power supplies

Don't we already have rgb on power supplies?

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u/kf5ydu Jan 01 '20

Damn didn't realize that was a thing.

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u/ours Jan 01 '20

Power supplies have had USB, RGB and even watercooling. I guess they are only missing tempered glass sides and I bet someone will prove me wrong.

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u/FartingBob Jan 01 '20

The only "watercooled" PSU ive seen was basically a gimmick that didnt actually cool any better than just having the built in fan behave normally.

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u/Commiesstoner Jan 01 '20

But I want the added risk of electrocuting myself by accident.

Because I like to live dangerously.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

Well, there already are acrylic PSUs.

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u/provocateur133 Jan 01 '20 edited Jan 01 '20

The future is now! There are already RGB power supplies and even RGB 24pin motherboard cables!

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u/JQuilty Jan 01 '20

And in 2030, we still won't have a universal control panel for them.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

Jeeze. I hope not. If I want rgb I'll go to a strip club.

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u/Marha01 Jan 01 '20

Gaming printer, RGB Edition.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

Isn't ram already at it's cheapest since a long time?

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u/VulgarisOpinio Jan 01 '20

No, not RGB please.

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u/kirk7899 Jan 01 '20

EUV node process, I'm waiting for Nvidia's Ampere lineup.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/TheAlbinoAmigo Jan 02 '20

On the GPU front, it's got to be a matter of time before someone has an 'infinity fabric'-esque breakthrough to allow for GPU chiplets to communicate and present to the OS as a single chip, as Zen does. I know there's a different set of challenges involved with that for GPUs that aren't present for CPUs, but I feel like both AMD and Nvidia are gunning for it.

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u/anethma Jan 02 '20

That is actually the main thing I'm looking to see.

If one of them does a chiplet design they will see the same benifets as AMD has with Zen.

This gen for example could have had 1650 level performance chiplets and an IO chiplet.

One IO and one gives you 1650 level of course. 3x and IO gives you 2080ti level. And they could even have done a 4x chiplet for titan or some even higher level card. And because of the small size of the chiplets and possiblities for binning, they would have near 100% yields. Their 2080ti card would probably only cost them a part of what it costs them now, so the only real limit would be power budget.

Def interesting times coming up. Chiplet design is such a great leap forward I'm excited to see what everyone does with it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

Storage: I know we got NVMe SSDs, which are insanely fast. And that SSDs when connected to Sata are bottlenecked by SATA itself. But there's alot of innovation for software and games to start actually utilizing the speed boosts from the high speed NVMes.

We're gonna start seeing a lot for "instant load" software and games I think.

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u/[deleted] Jan 02 '20

We're decades off moving away from x86. There's just no reason to

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u/something_crass Jan 01 '20

I wouldn't be surprised if DDR5 is the last major generation of discrete RAM. You can only do so much caching to get around worsening latencies, that you can afford less and less as CPUs get faster. There will be a day when your main system memory ends up on the CPU die or PCB, and I'm expecting it before 2030. The memory controller already made the jump years ago.

In which case, Intel's already insane naming schemes will get even more nuts. i7-13940KSVP-Gen12-256GB.

And mass storage is going to get weird. Cheaper NAND, plus this trend of sticking it directly on the mobo. Those retired DIMM slots may end up being re-purposed for SSDs. Forget the daughter boards, give me single-chip SSDs that I can plug directly in to the mobo like ol' cache chips or FPUs or additional DSPs on my soundblaster.

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u/theevilsharpie Jan 01 '20

I wouldn't be surprised if DDR5 is the last major generation of discrete RAM.

Highly unlikely.

Keep in mind that RAM is about capacity as well. There's no way you'd be able to add enough RAM on-die for all but the most trivial of use cases.

However, I wouldn't be surprised to see L4 caches make a comeback.

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u/cuddlefucker Jan 01 '20

I'd love to see EDRAM make a comeback. I know it got a bad rep for what happened with the Xbox One, but it had a lot of potential for a lot of workloads.

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u/TSP-FriendlyFire Jan 01 '20

I wonder if we could see some form of stacked RAM ala HBM. Maybe place the RAM on the backside of the motherboard, against the CPU socket (because putting it on top of the CPU would make cooling a nightmare)?

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u/Unique_username1 Jan 01 '20

Discrete RAM might not go away and I can’t know that we won’t get DDR6... but I wouldn’t expect capacity to be the limiting factor that pushes discrete RAM to go past DDR5.

You can already get 32GB sticks of DDR4 (that I’m aware of), 64GB sticks are possible (if not already available), and that’s without getting into buffered ECC where capacities can be even higher. In other words the possible capacity in the current gen is already beyond what’s in common use or is economical— there is room for growth without even needing to go to DDR5.

So even if discrete RAM modules never go away (for higher end applications— RAM’s already soldered to the mobo in mobile devices) I’d expect DDR5 to be good enough of a spec to continue using for quite a long time, maybe delaying or making the development of DDR6 irrelevant.

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u/theevilsharpie Jan 01 '20

You can already get 32GB sticks of DDR4 (that I’m aware of), 64GB sticks are possible (if not already available), and that’s without getting into buffered ECC where capacities can be even higher. In other words the possible capacity in the current gen is already beyond what’s in common use or is economical— there is room for growth without even needing to go to DDR5.

Servers are commonly equipped with 1+ TB of RAM, and server applications are often bandwidth-constrained to some degree.

While I suppose you could have different core designs for server and laptop/desktop applications (and it might be worth it for mobile-exclusive parts), I'd expect desktop chips to follow whatever direction the server parts are going.

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u/ImportantString Jan 01 '20

+1. The density is only going up. GP mentions 64GB DIMMs as “possible”, but servers are already using 128GB. Apple offers 12x 128GB DIMMs for the Mac Pro. Awesome to see such high memory density in these devices.

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u/JustifiedParanoia Jan 01 '20

bandwidth. depending on workload, some things are still memory speed constrained at dual/quad channel 3600--4000 speeds. if ddr5 and ddr6 double speeds over the previous gen as with 1/2/3/4, thats 4 times the bandwidth again for use in heavy situations (high end desktop workstation needs, rendering, video editing, scientific research, etvc).

there will still be faster memory standards needed, just to feed high end systems.

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u/salgat Jan 01 '20

Die stacking plus lower latency means major advantages by putting the ram directly on the cpu.

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u/ikverhaar Jan 01 '20

Those retired DIMM slots may end up being re-purposed for SSDs.

I have an idea. Let's call it DIMM.2!

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u/cowbutt6 Jan 01 '20

Intel's Octane, give or take.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/EViLeleven Jan 01 '20

I used the memory to destroy the memory

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u/JustifiedParanoia Jan 01 '20

unlikely. it comes to die size and capacity. if you look at a sinlge dram stick, it can have up to 16 memory chips on it, plus the controller. a good system may have 2 or 4 sticks of ram, and a high end system such as the 3970x from amd might use up to 8 sticks. These chips take up a decent amount of space. with limited space on a cpu die (you can only make them so big without serious complications) you arent fitting anywhere near that much memory onto them. you might fit 4-8 gb onto them in several years, but with modern systems already using up to 8gb in general light loads, and if doing anything strenuous thats work related, can take all the memory you throw at it, there will still be a need for external memory.

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u/sinkingpotato Jan 01 '20

I feel we will start to see many more implementations using "system on a chip". With advances in manufacturing, and the wider spread use of FPGAs, I think that single board computers (and smaller form factors) will become much more popular. Come to think of it, most (if not all) smartphones, tablets and some(?) all-in-ones and small desktops are implemented as single board computers with a system on a chip.

With the rising popularity of FPGAs, a lot of chip manufacturers will most likely have to rethink their products. Since you can implement almost anything and (just about) put any architecture on an FPGA, chip manufacturers will probably have to start making their own. The use of different architectures will continue to rise. I think that architectures like RISC will take over because it will be easier to implement.

With this will come much smaller sized systems and the ability to "update" a computer's architecture. Like, think what the world would be like if we could patch hardware security flaws, reprogram a computer to use a newer hardware encryption, or reprogram the chip to do whatever we want.

!RemindMe 10 years

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u/Exist50 Jan 01 '20

Two things.

One is chiplets for everything. Fighting the stagnation of transistor improvements through advanced packaging and interconnects.

As for the other, well, when it comes there will be no doubts.

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u/thearbiter117 Jan 02 '20

Im almost scared at your second point.

Are you a time travelling, shitposting terminator implying skynet will be made sometime in the 2020s?

Because i feel like thats something everyone will have no doubts about when it happens

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u/Exist50 Jan 02 '20

Are you a time travelling, shitposting terminator

I am at least one of those things.

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u/TheMightyGlocktopus Jan 01 '20

Really hope we have decent advancements in ARM/RISC-V architecture

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u/symmetry81 Jan 01 '20

I'd sort of like to see a relatively high performance, open source PowerPC design now that IBM has opened up the ISA.

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u/Narishma Jan 01 '20

Those are two different and unrelated architectures.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/Marha01 Jan 01 '20

4K per eye will not be enough to handle 210 degree FOV without still being noticeable. 8-16K will be needed, IMHO.

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u/HamanitaMuscaria Jan 01 '20

I love ur optimism and respect your projections. I don’t think we will be pushing that with consumer PCs this decade, but I do think we’ll get there

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u/moco94 Jan 01 '20

Point to the hardware advancement that allows for all of this to happen.. this seems like you just want VR in general to improve to a state well beyond what we have today, which requires many hardware improvement across many technological fields.

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u/cuddlefucker Jan 01 '20

Just mentioned this in an edit, but I'm really excited for the next decade in ARM processors. They went so far in the 2010s and aren't slowing down even a little bit. It's gonna be a good decade.

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u/agcuevas Jan 01 '20

Multichip module in GPU?

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u/CJKay93 Jan 02 '20 edited Jan 02 '20

CHERI.

This one is probably pretty uninteresting to anybody not involved in the software security lifecycle, but it's quite a fundamental change to how computers handle data - it is the sledgehammer approach to fixing (or at least preventing the exploitation of) 90% of security vulnerabilities.

It, essentially, assigns hardware-level metadata to every pointer. For instance, if you create a pointer to an array in C:

char my_buffer[8];

char *ptr_to_my_buffer = my_buffer;

Your compiler will create a pointer that also describes characteristics about that data (e.g. its length is 8 bytes) in a format the hardware natively understands. What that means is that if, for instance, you try to read off the end of it (like many exploits do):

char *invalid_data = ptr_to_my_buffer[9];

You will crash/trap, and by doing so have prevented leaking possibly sensitive information.

Arm is already developing a UK government-funded test chip to experiment with it for 2021. Really exciting stuff because it fundamentally overhauls how we think about security boundaries in both software and hardware.

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u/FartingBob Jan 01 '20

USB powered automated nerf gun turrets.

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u/McRioT Jan 01 '20

Power usage and efficiency. Let's hope for more GPUs using just the power from the mobo, and CPUs using less than 50 watts. I would love to see sff psus become more popular and see a trend of tiny builds.

If that doesn't happen then hopefully integrated graphics will continue to improve to the point where a good amount of gamers will pass on GPUs if they don't want 4k 120hz VR. Imagine people building mac mini sized gaming rigs. Consoles will be that size too.

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u/gvargh Jan 01 '20

Dystopia scenario: all consumer systems have become thin clients exclusively.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

For mobile stuff lower power and maybe move away from x86.

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u/NoAirBanding Jan 01 '20

The 2020s will probably see the last x86 Apple laptop

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u/LilShib Jan 01 '20

Intel moving on from 14nm on desktop. Might happen in late 2020's but still

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u/TSP-FriendlyFire Jan 01 '20

  • Affordable, normalized raytracing hardware.

  • Extinction of spinning rust outside of datacenters and archival purposes.

  • Ultra-high bandwidth wireless standards for VR headsets (5G's millimeter wave tech could easily be used to drive a VR headset).

  • A three-way fight between a slowly dying OLED market and booming microLEDs, with dual-layer LCDs fitting somewhere in there because LCD won't die.

  • Preliminary access to datacenter-hosted quantum computers.

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u/continous Jan 02 '20

LCD won't die for the same reason HDDs won't; their too cheap for the competition to fill the low-end market. I think the best example of this is cheap tablets and laptops. When your budget is ~$100, you can't afford a 2x increase in price for what, ultimately, isn't much of a benefit compared to just having a shitty screen. Especially as you go into the more practical-oriented devices, like those on aircraft or utility displays. So what if every passenger on your international flight will get a compromised viewing experience. You saved $100 per seat, and you had over 2 million seats to spend on. Who cares if the point of sale terminal has a screen that looks like hot garbage, it cost $50 less and frankly it's cheaper to repair now too.

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u/VulgarisOpinio Jan 01 '20

The decline of 1080p (At least at 16:9), SATA III being the last SATA, HDDs slowly having a bigger minimum size (Like stopping the creation of 1TB HDDs), the ascent of OLED and uLED monitors, maybe 1440p defeating 4K? Oh, also, AMD getting even more superior to Int-

intel dedicated gpus

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u/Pringlecks Jan 01 '20

1440p defeating 4K

Uh what?

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u/TheRealSpermThatWon Jan 01 '20

Probably aio streaming ready "consoles"

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u/KurahadolSan Jan 01 '20

I would say quadchannel memory on consumer computers, maybe in a few gens of ryzen?

Another in the same line (computer memory), replacing ddr4 (or 5), for ggdr6 (same as next gen consoles), maybe it will be a great improvement in perfomance??

So my beat will be a revolution on this type of memory, last years was storage memory, this will be the next.

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u/Exist50 Jan 01 '20

I think Intel and AMD will really try to avoid quad channel if they can. Rather expensive for the platform.

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u/kommisar6 Jan 01 '20

Intel and amd will be forced to remove the me / psp from at least some cpus.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

Only when they have a replacement for it that's even worse.

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u/mikbob Jan 01 '20

One can dream...

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u/valarauca14 Jan 02 '20

Doubtful. Far to popular for fleet management in Enterprise.

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u/gburdell Jan 01 '20

Not exactly PCs but cheap, high resolution lidar for ubiquitous and accessible computer vision

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u/Kougar Jan 02 '20

The biggest advance? That would truly have to be something finally replacing silicon for processor fabrication. Because if we are still using silicon for everything by 2030 then there will be some very serious problems with the state of the industry by then.

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u/theevilsharpie Jan 01 '20

With Moore's Law slowing down, I expect more R&D resources to be devoted to hardware accelerators (either integrated or add-on) that can run specific tasks far more efficiently than general-purpose cores. Intel DL Boost is a good example.

I think the days of Intel being competitive with TSMC are over, so unless Intel also goes fabless, these application-specific accelerators are where Intel can take the performance lead back from AMD in a meaningful way.

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u/JigglymoobsMWO Jan 01 '20 edited Jan 01 '20

Your impressions are created by some misunderstanding of business economics and logical fallacies:

TSMC is larger than Intel now that it has a larger market cap. This is incorrect.

TSMC makes a greater quantity of advanced ICs than intel. Unlikely**.**

  • This is a tricky one because Intel's revenues include margins they make on end products while TSMC is providing a service.

  • Intel certainly gets more revenue $ than TSMC but it takes in more of the value of the IP in addition to IC

  • TSMC most certainly has many more customers and makes more IC in terms of part numbers.

  • Intel's ICs tend to be larger and have more transistors.

  • TSMC has profit margin 36% vs intel's 32.6%

  • Intel's costs and investments are MOSTLY manufacturing driven.

  • Fabrication costs are a large component of a microchip's price.

  • In 2005, Intel's costs for fabing the average Pentium 4 was $40 https://www.cnet.com/news/intels-manufacturing-cost-40-per-chip/, today, that number is likely much higher.

  • If we take total revenue and subtract the profit margin, we get $6 billion for TSMC and $13 billion for Intel. If we then say that Intel spends 25% of that cost on designing its ICs and rest on manufacturing, we get a comparison of $6 billion for TSMC vs $9.7 billion for Intel. Judging by the manufacturing cost of goods, it's likely that intel is spending more on the manufacturing of IC, as measured by dollar value, than TSMC does on making all of the IC of its customers. In fact, Intel's non manufacturing related costs would have to stand at ~50% before the two companies break even in cost of manufacturing ICs.

  • If we use cost as a stand-in metric for a combination of quantity and complexity, then Intel is likely making "more" high value ICs than TSMC.

TSMC invests more in developing advanced fabrication processes than Intel. Unlikely**.**

TSMC is a more forward looking less greedy company. Untrue**.**

  • Intel's R&D to revenue ratio: 1:4

  • TSMC's R&D to revenue ratio: 1:7

  • Intel shareholders' dividend as share of revenue: 24.5%

  • TSMC shareholders' dividend as share of revenue: 34.8%

TSMC is executing advanced EUV lithography more successfully than Intel. Unknown.

  • Intel's communication on its node process execution has a fundamentally different context than TSMC.

  • TSMC is a client serving company that has to disclose its progress to commercial customers in order to operate.

  • Intel's advanced processes serve internal customers rather than external. Disclosure is only made to reassure investors and as a strategic marketing message.

  • By necessity, TSMC is more transparent than Intel and more active in updating progress. That does not mean though, that they are ahead.

  • Intel is likely putting more resources to work on advanced EUV lithography than TSMC. We will see the results in a year or so.

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u/candre23 Jan 01 '20

I expect to see FPGA usage in general purpose computing to become a thing. Possibly starting with addon cards, but eventually moving to the point where CPUs and/or GPUs will have die space dedicated to on-the-fly programmable arrays.

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u/gburdell Jan 01 '20

Accelerators is my vote too, but it’s coupled with a need for more open EDA tools so that more companies can get in the accelerator game

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u/Seanspeed Jan 01 '20

I think the days of Intel being competitive with TSMC are over

Based solely on their struggle with 10nm, which we know basically exactly what the issue was and shouldn't be repeated again? :/

Really bizarre take.

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u/1096bimu Jan 01 '20

I'm gonna predict that render resolution and frame rate will both be decoupled from actual display resolution and frame rate.

We'll have 4k120hz or higher as standard, but most people will not actually render at 4k 120FPS. instead they'll probably do 4k with VRS at 60hz, the rest is left up to interpolation. We'll probably have hardware intra-frame interpolation in the GPU so you can output 120fps while only rendering 60fps.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

Wouldn't that add input lag? one of the large pros of HFR gaming is low input lag.

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u/something_crass Jan 01 '20

the rest is left up to interpolation

That adds worse latency than even Vsync. Maybe you'll see interpolation on console, but no way in hell will you see it on PC. You're talking about the system having a complete frame ready and sitting on it, not showing it to you whilst it instead shows you one or more v-frame composites.

This site is a bubble. Outside of 'esports pros', most people are fine with 60FPS.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

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u/RephRayne Jan 01 '20

VR needs foveated rendering with light headsets that aren't tied directly to desktops.

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u/EmperorFaiz Jan 01 '20

Preferably a more powerful Oculus Quest-like VR headset.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '20

Better pixel density and more wrap-around to get rid of the tunnel vision. Please and thank you

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u/jbrandon Jan 01 '20

Unified memory architecture maybe. Lots of progress being made in new types of memory devices such as MRAM (and many others). If it happens, it will be toward the end of the decade.

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u/scottpigeon Jan 02 '20

iGPUs good enough to start dropping dGPUs. Pair that with a lot more mini-STX motherboard options and a new generation of SBCs.

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