* Energy decline is accelerating.
* Perf-per-watt is stagntting (hence the comparisson of RPi @ 28nm vs M1 @ 5nm).
* This trend leads to economic decline (Note: I don't understand why, maybe it's explained but I didn't get it).
* Eventually hardware won't be replaceable.
* Software should be improved to get better efficiency (Note: I'm not sure this is a claim made by OP, but it's something I understood).
Edit: having taken the time to summarize what I understood from the comment, I must say I don't quite agree. The RPi vs M1 comparisson seems way way off, they both have a similar power envelope but the M1 has about 10x better results in various benchmarks. I don't agree that hardware won't be replaceable (save for a civilization shattering event, which is not what we're discussing here).
I do believe software _could_ be more optimized, but then again I'm not sure that's a point OP was making (they did mention something about "software gatekeeping" which I took that way, probably misunderstood what they really meant). Now that I've thought about this some more, this is probably something I conflated into OPs post based on my opinions.
I'm not quite sure what to think about energy decline. I think they meant about using more energy for things that used to take less energy before? If that is the correct interpretation, I'm not sure what we're talking about. On micro scales (eg: computers) I don't think that holds, but maybe it is happening on macro scales (eg: large industries). But even for macro scales, I think there's been a shift to efficiency, if only to reduce energy costs. Then again, that's not an area where I have the faintest idea, so maybe I'm blatantly wrong and OP is right.
What I meant with gatekeeping was closed software (hard and firm too) that limits what the owner can and cannot do.
Use linux!
[0] RPi: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=raspberr...
[1] M1: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=apple-ma...
The M1 is only good at highly specialized tasks that they have custom designed hard/firm/soft-ware for; which are all locked both legally and technically into a tomb where they will remain until the end of humanity.
If you spend one second even thinking about them; you are wasting time for eternity! Infinite waste!
RISC-V with an open GPU and linux is the only saving grace. I doubt we will manage before it's too late at a price/performance that can compete with Raspberry Pi 2/4 for server duty and Jetson Nano for client duty.
Fingers crossed and may you spend your money wisely!
The economy is dependent on eternal growth and will fail unless you climb the tree of progress faster than the rate of energy decline which is accelerating VERY fast.
Once customers realize that the low hanging fruits have been poached and they don't get better hardware when their old hardware dies (or most likely no hardware at all) they will look at buying quality that is open (not gatekept with software) and the inflationary rent seeking cycle will spark.
Buy what you can while it's still open enough to last you 100 years.
EUV is a dead end because the costs of that complexity cannot be maintained when the energy supply is failing, production speed is too slow and I suspect quality will deteriorate quickly with heat and time!
Raspberry 4 has 2Gflops/W at 28nm and M1 has 2.5Gflops/W at 5nm, you make the math!
RAM latency will never improve and increased bandwidth is meaningless for all interesting applications (not embarrasingly parallelizable ones).