This article is pointing a well known problem and @cbrake and I were discussing similar topic yesterday where I mentioned that if your business is about selling software services then you need a stable H/W platform and spending ahead of time would be a net benefit because services will recover the investment perhaps in 10x multiplier, on the other hand if your business is selling hardware and software is just an enabler then SOC on the hardware is perhaps not most important element. I do agree that more and more business is around software services now a days and hence the first point is relevant. World has been doing serious hardware for many more years than serious software so naturally there is a bias in our thinking and we are yet to come off that bias where software is only to keep the lights on. IMO given how things are progressing in past 20-30 years you want to overspec your hardware regardless.