siliconcentered

Siliconcentered is an adjective used to describe a focus on silicon-based hardware and infrastructure as the central locus of computation, cognition, or technological development. The term is not widely standardized and appears mainly in discussions of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and technology strategy.

In philosophy and cognitive science, a siliconcentered view holds that cognitive processes can be realized on silicon substrates and that the hardware platform plays a significant role in constraining or shaping cognitive properties. This stance is often contrasted with substrate-independent accounts, which claim that minds can be realized in multiple substrates, biological or nonbiological, without essential change in cognitive properties. Siliconcentered arguments emphasize the physical and architectural constraints of digital circuits—timing, parallelism, memory hierarchies—as shaping possible forms of computation and even aspects of identity over time.

In technology, a siliconcentered design or strategy highlights silicon hardware at the center of product architecture, performance, and infrastructure. It encompasses processor-centric computing, silicon-first optimization, and supply-chain considerations that tie software ecosystems to microchips, manufacturing nodes, and silicon availability.

Critics argue that a siliconcentered view can overemphasize hardware at the expense of software, data, user experience, and emergent properties of complex systems. They point to non-silicon forms of computation, such as quantum or neuromorphic approaches, and to the growing importance of software-defined architectures, cloud infrastructure, and environmental considerations of semiconductor fabrication.

See also: substrate independence, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, hardware-software co-design, Silicon Valley.