System-on-chips for everyone!

Apple has demonstrated that the system-on-chip design (seen in their new MacBooks, iMacs, and Mac Minis) is popular.

What does system-on-chip design mean for other forms of computing? Will other manufacturers adopt that design?

An obvious market for system-on-chip design is Chromebooks. (If they are not using it already.) Many Chromebooks already use ARM processors (others use Intel) and moving the ARM-based Chromebooks to ARM-based system-on-chip design is fairly straightforward. Chromebooks also have a narrow design specification, controlled by Google, which makes a system-on-chip design feasible. Google limits the variation of Chromebooks, so it may be that the entire Chromebook market could be served with three (or possibly four) distinct designs.

Chromebooks would benefit from system-on-chip designs in two ways: lower cost and higher performance. One may think performance is unimportant to Chromebooks because Chromebooks are merely hosts for the Chrome browser, but that is not true. The Chrome browser (indeed, any modern browser) must do a lot, from rendering HTML to running JavaScript to playing audio and video. They must also handle keystrokes and focus, tasks normally associated with an operating systems's window manager. In addition, browsers must now execute web-assembly (WASM) for some applications. Browsers are complex critters.

Google also has their eyes on games, and improved performance will allow more Chromebooks to run advanced games.

I think we can safely assume that Chromebooks will move to system-on-chip designs.

What about Windows PCs? Will they change to system-on-chip designs? Here I think the answer is not so obvious.

Microsoft sets hardware specifications for Windows. If you want to build a PC that runs Windows, you have to conform to those specifications. It is quite possible that Microsoft will design their own system-on-chip for PCs and use them in Microsoft's own Surface tablets and laptops. It is possible that they will make the design available to other manufacturers (Dell, Lenovo, etc.). Such a move would make it easier to build PCs that conform to Microsoft's specifications.

A system-on-chip design would possibly split designs for PCs into two groups: system-on-chip in one group and traditional discrete components in the other. System-on-chip designs work poorly with expansion slots, so PCs that use such a design would probably have no expansion slots -- not even one for a GPU. But many folks want GPUs, so they will prefer traditional designs. We may see a split market for Windows PCs, with customizable PCs using discrete components and non-upgradable PCs (similar to Chromebooks and Macbooks) using system-on-chip designs.

Such a split has already occurred in the Windows PC market. Laptop PCs tend to have limited options for upgrades (if any). Small desktop PCs also have limited options. Large desktops are the computers that still have expansion slots; these are the computers that let the owner replace components such as RAM and storage.

I think system-on-chip designs are the way of the future for most of our computers (laptops, desktops, phones, etc.). I think we'll see better performance, lower cost, and improved reliability. It's a move in a good direction.