this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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[–] mindbleach 2 points 4 months ago

Similar deal with LCD versus other display technology: once something is dominant, a metric shitload of money is spent pushing from its practical shortcomings toward its theoretical limits. Even twenty years ago, LCDs suuucked. Plasma would save us from their high latency. OLED would save us from their low contrast. And then, uh... neither did much of anything. LCDs were just so damn cheap that consumers didn't care for much else, and manufacturers attacked the technical problems keeping them slow and dim. Nowadays - they're still not ideal. But nothing else is a drop-in replacement, because nothing else has enjoyed the same firehose of revenue-fueled R&D.

Lithium has problems. But after a couple decades as the technology for laptops and smartphones, those problems are mostly jokes about that exploding Samsung phone, and the fact gasoline still has higher density. If something can be cheaper - it will gradually disrupt and displace this highly-regarded standard.

Expect a similar outcome for RISC-V versus ARM.