This is a prediction I have made verbally many times over the past several years, but recently had occasion to write down, so I figured I may as well record it here for posterity.
===8<—cut-here—
Within a few decades, for most individuals, a “computer” will be a small box that could fit easily in a pocket or be worn like a watch or pendant. Even most of that thing’s size will be physical protection, battery, a medium for personalization (the surface), and just making it big enough not to be lost so easily. The actual computer itself will be a single smallish chip, or a few of them on a very small motherboard. This will include at least the RAM, CPU, mass storage, and some communication as below. (Not sure about GPU; that may be delegated to the various form factors as below.)
Now you may be wondering, how would we use such a tiny thing? Their watch, phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop, and possibly further things such as VR glasses, brain implants, plus things we have yet to imagine, will be basically nothing but docking stations for the same “computer”, to allow for various sizes and types of human interface. (Including possibly taking over GPU duties.)
Said chip won’t even have to be physically inserted or attached, but communicate over something basically equivalent to high speed very short range Bluetooth. (Of course options would exist for use-cases where it would be further from the user, akin to today’s Bluetooth speakers.) We’ll be back to having one “computer” per person, though maybe additional ones issued by work, and of course we nerds would still want to play with different kinds. There will still be different kinds (or OSes) better suited to different tasks, but most people will still stick with one.
They’ll be cheap enough that you don’t need to do something like install Linux on an old one to make it affordable (versus the ones from Apple, with MacOS installed, or one that can run Windows reasonably performantly), though of course Open Source enthusiasts will still do so. Within a few more decades they’ll be cheap enough that your kids might get them for free in their breakfast cereal.
(Servers are a different matter. Just as with today’s machines, one of these may be enough for a small company’s shared-IT needs, while larger companies may need multiple, or something beefier, and there will be more and more “data centers” and VM providers. This will NOT shrink them, as demand will grow to match or exceed supply.)
===8<—cut-here—
(Note, this is not including any breakthroughs in quantum computing. I don’t foresee much happening there that would affect this much very soon. There may be helpful breakthroughs in room-temperature superconductivity, but thermal noise remains a very thorny issue, never mind larger physical vibrations.)
So what do you think? Write your thoughts below!