Satnam Singh: AI is realizing 'Computing Without Processors,' erasing the hardware/software divide
satnam6502 · x · 2026-11-07
Google veteran systems engineer Satnam Singh revisits his 2011 ACM Queue article "Computing Without Processors," restating his long-held vision: write a single program and compile it automatically to any mix of hardware and software, with the split shifting to fit performance and cost targets.
He argues this has been hard because hardware and software use different languages, semantic models, and abstractions — barriers rooted in how humans organize themselves and the limits of human brains.
AI doesn't care about this turf marking: it synthesizes hardware and software together, formally verifies the result, or derives correct-by-construction implementations from formal specs. In some cases, he suggests, we may not need CPUs at all.
Related event: Google Engineer Satnam Singh: AI Is Blurring Hardware-Software Boundaries(2 posts)→
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