Toward a World Filled with Computers

II t is my pleasure to present another East Asia issue, the first in two years. In my Guest Editor’s Introduction of 1991’ I noted some differences between the North American and Japanese microelectronics research and development scenes. The United States tended to emphasize high-powered applications such as superfast workstations and gigabit networks. In contrast, Japan gave more attention to the need for cost performance in home electronics and other consumer-oriented products. That was two years ago. Today, however, that clear-cut distinction is changing. True, we still see continued competition over development of highperformance CPUs in the lOO-MIPS-plus class for workstations and personal computers, with little regard for power consumption or chip size. At the same time, however, growing importance is being given around the world to microprocessors in the lo-MIPS range. These processors-which along with high performance feature low-power dissipation and small chip size-support embedded systems. We are seeing the appearance of high MIPS-per-watt microprocessors. Ever since the collapse of the Berlin Wall between East and West, emphasis has been shifting away from military technology toward civilian electronics markets. Even the United States is pouring new energy into embedded processors for portable systems and other consumer products. The applications for high-performance microprocessors are beginning to change dramatically. In the TRON Project that we have been promoting over the last several years, we have continued to describe the future computer society as evolving along certain lines. We see the objects that surround us in our daily lives becoming increasingly embedded with computer chips, sensors, and actuators. These computerized objects then become linked by wired and wireless networks, forming distributed-processing systems in which the objects collaborate with each other.’ (See Figure 1.) We are now well into the 199Os, and things are moving increasingly in the direction of our predicted scenario. Recently, terms like computeraugmentedenvironment and ubiquitous computink seem to have become buzzwords in computer science. They describe an environment in which computers are used everywhere around us. This trend reflects the advances in development of the constituent technologies, such as small but high-performance sensors and displays, and high-performance sensors with low-power dissipation. It is becoming quite feasible to realize a world filled with computers. In the next few years the world of microelectronics is likely to undergo great changes. The time has come to look ahead to applications for a world full of computers. With this background in mind, I describe recent microprocessor developments in Japan and, as in past issues, bring readers up to date on the TRON Project.