JUNE 2023 IN
RICK ASTER’S WORLD
Apple’s new “system on a chip” Mac architecture shows how computer manufacturing can get simpler.
The heart of the simplified design is the expanded central processor, the “system on a chip” that combines at least five semiconductor components into a single part. On the surface, this eliminates four parts and four steps in the assembly, but the implications go deeper than that.
It is not only the extra silicon pieces that are taken away, but all the connecting components between them. That’s dozens of tiny parts that are no longer part of the assembly process.
With fewer parts that could potentially fail, the new computers are likely to be more physically stable and therefore more reliable, which may mean they last twice as long in actual use. In the long run, this reduces the demand for replacement computers and computer repairs.
Putting the digital components physically closer together allows them to process data faster. This added computing power means that a single computer can do the work of two or three computers of the previous generation of design. In a few settings, this could reduce the total number of computers in service. More broadly, for portable computers, this arrangement is more power-efficient, so that a battery last longer between charges. Reduced battery use also means that batteries last longer before requiring replacement, another factor reducing demand for repair and replacement of computers.
The streamlined designs could lead to future reductions in manufacturing costs as engineers find better ways to make the expanded “system on a chip” processors.
Computer users won’t have to think very much about the changes, but at the factories, there will be a lot less work to do.
The changes could parallel the design changes in VCRs and DVD players in decades past. New designs looked almost the same on the outside, but if you opened them up, the new designs were almost empty on the inside.
With fewer units in service, longer replacement cycles, and sagging prices, the economic statistics might look like people have lost interest in computers. In truth, it will only be that computers have gotten simpler.
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