Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_...
See also: how ridiculously cheap microcontrollers have gotten, and the current messy DRAM pricing (high-capacity chips used in phones sometimes ending up cheaper than low-performance/capacity chips).
I think if that scenario happens, the user won't notice because those ASICs will be deployed in "the cloud".
In that case, rather than a Javascript engine, wouldn't you have an ASIC for the script itself?
Wait. We have most of that already. :)
Custom asics would be expensive now, but perhaps... exponential... cost decrease with sufficient demand. A related approach is programmable asics. I've heard this was researched decades ago, but (I presume), silicon was so cheap, so to speak, it wasn't worth it then.
Today, with "peak silicon", perhaps all these discarded tailings will be picked over. To mix mining metaphors.
>A related approach is programmable asics. I've heard this was researched decades ago
What do you mean, if not fpgas?
[0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Non-specialized_hardware_comparis...
wait, we're looking at 18,000,000 Mhash/s vs 2568 Mhash/s Like... 4 orders of magnitude?
And, 11,000 Mhash/J vs 3 Mhash/J, over 3 ordera of mag, just like you said.
yah, fpgas
Old gaming consoles had cartridges (with memory); I can imagine a future in which complex software is transported in the same manner, except cartridges contain specialized asics. Or perhaps a step forward - a chip making device in every home, an equivalent of sorts of burning music to cd.