More hardware means less software

Recent trends in the semiconductor industry indicate that very large-scale integration (VLSI) will offer microprocessor designers two conflicting approaches to designing future systems: (1) They can continue the mainstream trend, where VLSI is used to build increasingly complex microprocessors - and where greater complexity is exhibited as more hardware to do functions previously done by software alone; or (2) They can, as proposed by a small number of designers, take the opposite tack and build simpler processors, where more functions are done by software.