cost of computers is proportional to chip area in square millimeters. this is because chips are cut from a wafer which means the larger the chip the fewer can be cut from a given wafer size. currently a 12" TSMC 5nm wafer costs $17,000 for example. this doesn’t include any cost of designing the chips, just the manufacturing cost of the wafer.
for a very large chip like Nvidia RTX 4090 ( which is a bit smaller than a pack of matches ) you can only cut so many of them from the wafer. but a processor powering a smartwatch for example is much smaller, maybe the size of a pea while the processor going into a toaster may be the size of a grain of rice, and this would be a very smart toaster ! like one that has WIFI and some kind of screen.
we’re talking about the size of silicon die here not the exterior dimensions of whatever it is packaged into, such as ball grid array or whatever.
another way to think of it is Nvidia RTX 4090 processor has 18,000 processing cores. a fully functioning processor has other parts than just the core such as memory controller, I/O etc but you would still be able to make A LOT of primitive processors out of same silicon real estate as a single RTX 4090 chip.
from here you can estimate how many chips they can afford to stuff into everything - A LOT !
and if they can - they will.
on my desk right now i have 6 devices with some kind of wireless connectivity and four devices with microphones in them for example. it will only get worse.
as for my car it has cameras, microphones, GPS and internet connection for example.
so in theory it could record everything i say, everywhere i go, everybody i meet and send all that information to the FBI
and in the extreme case it could deliberately drive me off a cliff because the steering is electric and controlled by the computer. even though there is a mechanical link from the steering wheel to the tires the link is there as a backup in case the steering motor fails but if the motor goes rogue i doubt i would be able to overpower it manually.
future cars are likely to lose the physical link between steering wheel and tires completely as it would allow much more nimble steering and better self-driving experience. at that rate eventually 100% of car accidents will actually be remote murder.
actually reminds me of Neuralink where they trained the monkey to play pong then disconnected the controller and the monkey continued to play not realizing the controller is not plugged in and actually the neuralink implant is simply reading the monkey’s mind … well cars of the future will be like that.
you will think you’re driving the car but actually the car will be driving itself and then it will simply go off the cliff …
