Phrenology, astrology, risk, and product quality

Engineering is the act of making intelligent tradeoffs and compromises among conflicting and sometimes mutually exclusive goals. To improve product performance, the die size might need to increase, which diminishes the chip's economic attractiveness. Assessing risk and product quality is not an exact science. Nevertheless, the computing industry's future rests as much on our success in achieving product quality as it does in continuing to innovate in circuits and microarchitectures.