![]() ![]() While the ultimate limit of transistor density seems to get closer and closer every day, the true limit of achievable computing power is still an open question. ![]() There's potential in the idea of building CPUs with 3D circuits, with layers of microchip components that communicate vertically and horizontally. We're already seeing cost-effective ways to build large processors from multiple smaller processors, such as AMD's chiplet designs or Apple's strategy of gluing their baseline chips together to make mega CPUs that operate as if they were one system. Netburst launched with 1.3 and 1.4 GHz, increased to 2.2 GHz with the 130 nm Northwood core (55 million transistors) in 2002, and to 3.8 GHz with the 90 nm Prescott core (125 million transistors. At some point, you can't keep electrons inside your tiny circuits anymore, so trying to make things smaller hits a brick wall.Īt that point, it may be time to move to another type of computing substrate, such as photonics, but there are likely myriad ways to get more performance from semiconductors that don't involve making transistors smaller. Most notably, Intel no longer releases the. Number of transistors, performance, clock speed, power, and cores per chip, graphed over time Source: The Future of Computing Performance (2011). However, people are watching transistor counts and whether Moore's Law is about to fade. Two years of additional data do not seem to matter much. The article does a good job explaing why. In the following I will provide a frequently requested update to my former 40 Years of Microprocessor Trend Data post. In Part 1, we covered computer architecture and how a processor works from a high level. Just to give you an example actual transistor size on 7nm TMSC node is 22 nm, actual transistor size on 14+++ Intel node is in reality 24 nm in size. There are already numerous challenges with the tiny components in modern processors struggling with unwanted quantum effects. A semi-log plot of transistor counts for microprocessors against dates of introduction, nearly doubling every two years Semiconductor device fabrication MOSFET scaling ( process nodes) 0 10 m 1971 00 6 m 1974 00 3 m 1977 1. But whether it is the maximum operating frequency of a CPU, the smallest size of a transistor, or the lowest voltage at which transistors can operate, there are indeed physical limits that will eventually be reached. This is the third installment in our CPU design series. ![]()
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