eli5 – Why are ‘System on a Chip’ computer’s potentially faster?
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The parts of a computer that connect the different chips generally work slower than the internals of the chips. If you put all of those parts onto the same chip as the CPU all of the interconnections are much shorter and can work more quickly. It will also likely use less power as well.
The downside is that the chip will be bigger and harder to cool. If you are already trying to cram as much as possible onto your chips, like multi-core cpus, you get to the point where it’s better to use several connected chips instead.
I suspect that within 10 years or so it will become feasible to cram enough computing power for pretty much any desktop use onto the one chip and computers will all shrink down to the size of a cellphone. We’re just about there already.
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