> As such, I think it will be a while before I can pick components out on Mouser's website, and have all those component chiplets fused to an interconnect wafer and delivered to my home or employer's shipping dock (though that would be damned awesome).
I agree. People have been talking about that future since at least the 1990s (back then SOC didn't mean a somewhat standard chip with a lot of peripherals, but literally a custom die with your own hardware on it). "Hardware/software co-design" was part of the jargon of the day. I'm not holding my breath.
But I do imagine seeing a lot of consumer products go this way. Not a $3 IoT light switch/malware vector, but anything that gets rid of connectors is a win on both the BOM and reliability standpoint, but anything in the $50-$500 price range with volume over a million units is probably worth it.
I agree. People have been talking about that future since at least the 1990s (back then SOC didn't mean a somewhat standard chip with a lot of peripherals, but literally a custom die with your own hardware on it). "Hardware/software co-design" was part of the jargon of the day. I'm not holding my breath.
But I do imagine seeing a lot of consumer products go this way. Not a $3 IoT light switch/malware vector, but anything that gets rid of connectors is a win on both the BOM and reliability standpoint, but anything in the $50-$500 price range with volume over a million units is probably worth it.