I agree. With custom hardware, one could drastically increase the performance of many distributed operations. For example, Google&#x27;s Spanner[1] uses GPS receivers and atomic clocks to ensure global consistency.<p>The current state of distributed systems makes me think of 3D games before Nvidia&#x27;s GeForce 256. Without dedicated hardware, there was only so much you could do.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Spanner_(database)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Spanner_(database)</a>