[in-reply to TPM]: Quite so (esp. w/r to CUDA)! On the CPU front, in relation to enthusiasm for an arch., I’ll quote Robert Smith who develops Quantum Computing simulation software in Common Lisp (SBCL) at Rigetti, eventually targeting Summit: “I also like ppc64el because I have two POWER8 servers racked up in my spare bedroom”. Many young minds with Neoverse laptops and workstations (affordable yet performant ones) would likely do wonders for that arch’s software stack, in short and long terms (I think). There’s a bit of a gaping hole between smartphones/tablets/hobby-boards on the low end, and HPC/AI-ML/Enterprise/Cloud (A64FX, Grace, Altra-Max, Graviton3, …) on the high end, except for Apple’s very nice kit (which doesn’t quite run Linux nor Windows natively I think).

And hence, the IBM mainframe and the AS/400 (Power Systems running IBM i) are still around. Fully supported stacks with complex and hard to move applications make even even proprietary hardware palatable. Ya know, like a TPU. Or an Nvidia GPU. HA!

I think that “fully supported and portable software stack[s]” are key to long-term success of this (and other new) architecture[s]. Especially for ARM CPUs, that have been the “future” knees-bees for (at least) a decade (and now challenged by RISC-V/VI). For these, as in prior gravy periods, it should be strategically most beneficial to seed university computer labs with workstations (and, possibly, small supers) of the target arch., so as to develop a generation of young minds trained in the programming, and use (and enthusiasm for), such highly-performant (yet slightly non-mainstream) computational systems. It worked nicely for SGI and SUN back in the days (dot-com boom) … but x86 fought back with outstanding affordability. If “emergent” system archs can remain relatively “affordable” (yet performant and energy efficient), they should get themselves a rather sweet ride, for a couple of decades, provided that the enthusiasm of young minds can be switched on for them.