Thank you for this great thread!
For instruction limits, the query charging proposal as linked to by @jeshli (Community Consideration: Explore Query Charging - #31 by icpp) seems like an interesting next step to explore from my perspective.
For memory limits, I’m hoping that Wasm64 will be effective. I think it’d be great to understand the exact effects it’ll have in more detail though.
Exploring dedicated “High performance computing” (likely also with GPUs, e.g. for DeAI applications) and “storage” subnets seems like a good idea and would enhance the IC’s toolkit significantly.
While subnets are a great architecture choice for a scalable, decentralized cloud like the IC, I like the idea of abstracting these away in the dev experience such that the “dfx deploy” demand becomes “smarter” (and allocates resources as best fit) and the canister orchestration is adapted automatically based on usage/workloads (to balance canister demands with subnet supplies). The dev would then only specify parameters as deployment requirements and preferences (or stick to the default smart handling by dfx deploy and the network).