The big difference this time around is that a lot of us no longer need cutting edge CPU performance. The CPU in my home computer is over 10 years old, and I se

The big difference this time around is that a lot of us no longer need cutting edge CPU performance. The CPU in my home computer is over 10 years old, and I see no need to upgrade for performance. A fast 2010-era CPU is still pretty darn good for a lot of common uses. That was definitely not the case at the turn of the century. In 2000, a new personal computer might have had a Pentium 4 or PowerPC G4, while in 1990 it had an 80486 or 68030 -- a huge performance difference. You couldn't even run a 2000-era OS (except Linux) on a 1990 CPU, and you wouldn't have wanted to if you could. I don't know much about RISC-V, but even if it's 10 years behind the state of the art, that sounds good to me!