Change is in the air regarding system design. Embedded systems hardware design has never been as boring as PC design, where progress is marked by monotonically increasing clock speeds and CPU selection can be done pretty much from a single vendor, except for those daredevils who opt for AMD processors.

In fact, the multiplicity of choices has been a problem for embedded systems with tool vendors being forced to support at least half a dozen major architectures and innumerable variations on those themes. It is only in the last few years that ARM has dominated power-sensitive designs and Motorola/IBM has done the same for the rest. This has settled down to the point where we could finally get some work done, so (of course) it's time to shift some paradigms!

The most radical change coming down the pike is quantum computing. A recent article in MIT's Technology Review shows how this little gem should be on us within a decade or so. My bet is that it will show up a little ahead of that schedule, and I am quite sure that I don't know how to program these beasts.

Less radical but perhaps more immediate is an application of nanotechnology to memory. There are scattered references to these technologies, but this Washington Times article gives a good overview. This breakthrough is a real blast from the past, in that it closely resembles the core memory mentioned in a post here recently.

Larry Mittag