We wouldn't have to truly start from scratch. The designers would still be around, and they would know the basics of how to design a chip. Sure, the first few generations of computers will be lousy as they don't have the tools we do now, but that will simply mean the first post-apocalyptical computers will be only as powerful as an 8086, just without the bone-headed parts (the scant number of registers on the x86 is near criminal, IMHO). One of the side-affects, too, is that those revolutionary/evolutionary designs that break legacy systems may be implemented, causing better performance than before. The design and implementation will still be there, we just won't go down as many of the dead ends getting there.
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We wouldn't have to truly start from scratch. The designers would still be around, and they would know the basics of how to design a chip. Sure, the first few generations of computers will be lousy as they don't have the tools we do now, but that will simply mean the first post-apocalyptical computers will be only as powerful as an 8086, just without the bone-headed parts (the scant number of registers on the x86 is near criminal, IMHO). One of the side-affects, too, is that those revolutionary/evolutionary designs that break legacy systems may be implemented, causing better performance than before. The design and implementation will still be there, we just won't go down as many of the dead ends getting there.