While I agree that easier speed upgrades to hardware is one advantage we should expect a digital mind to have, I wouldn’t call that the primary advantage.
Anithite mentions some others in their comment. I think increasing hardware size is a pretty big one.
The biggest I think though is substrate independence. This unlocks many others. Easy hardware upgrades, rapid copying, travel at the speed of light between different substrate locations, easy storage of backup copies, ability to easily store oneself in a compressed form and then expand again, to add and modify parts of yourself. And many more.
The beings best able to colonize the galaxy are obviously going to be ones with these sorts of advantages. Being able to send yourself in a hundred spaceships, each the size of a pea, with a compressed dormant copy of you, pushed through the interstellar spaces on laser beams operated by a copy of yourself remaining behind… No biological entity can compete with that kind of space travel, unless we are very mistaken about the laws of physics.
While I agree that easier speed upgrades to hardware is one advantage we should expect a digital mind to have, I wouldn’t call that the primary advantage. Anithite mentions some others in their comment. I think increasing hardware size is a pretty big one. The biggest I think though is substrate independence. This unlocks many others. Easy hardware upgrades, rapid copying, travel at the speed of light between different substrate locations, easy storage of backup copies, ability to easily store oneself in a compressed form and then expand again, to add and modify parts of yourself. And many more. The beings best able to colonize the galaxy are obviously going to be ones with these sorts of advantages. Being able to send yourself in a hundred spaceships, each the size of a pea, with a compressed dormant copy of you, pushed through the interstellar spaces on laser beams operated by a copy of yourself remaining behind… No biological entity can compete with that kind of space travel, unless we are very mistaken about the laws of physics.