What will semiconductors be like a quarter of a century from now?

Development is going to occur to semiconductors in the next one, two, five, ten, twenty-five, fifty, and two-hundred-fifty years. That development, most likely, will not be merely a boring-humdrum linear extrapolation of present trends. However, predicting just what that development will turn out to be, when it happens, is far from easy. Here, the author presents four assertions which he believes will form the shape of the semiconductor scene over the next two to three decades: (1) ASICs/memories/processors; (2) fewer and bigger chips; (3) standard cells, but no more standard chips; and (4) software becoming everything