6. Concluding remarks

Computer architectures continue to use paradigms and techniques that have been around for decades: Von Neuman's model is still dominant, and techniques such as pipelining, pipelined and superscalar execution, caches, virtual memory, etc. have been in use for a very long time.

However, several phenomena are causing significant changes:

• the wall of heat has replaced the search for raw performance with performance/watt and control of power and energy consumption has become the key issue;

• the computer, whether visible or invisible (embedded systems), is no longer the central element. The Internet and all it entails - massive data and the Internet of Things, for example - mean that computers are increasingly becoming components of embedded and mobile systems, rather than their traditional...