Computer Organization

Some Historic Perspective (continued)

The future

There have been remarkably steady improvements in size, cost, and availability of computers for 50 years.
But there seems to be real limits to the clock rate of integrated circuits.
Parallel computing is an important alternative.
We are now seeing the incredible rise of distributed computing and the importance of the network.
Computing is becoming ubiquitous, with more and more embedded systems.
What about "exotic" technologies such as optical switching or biological or quantum computing?