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10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

anandtech.com

51–60 of 180 posts

Re: 10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

#51
post #24

It's interesting that while we aren't at 10 GHz quite yet, the functionality that was mentioned in the article [1][2] is here and works even on budget smartphones. -- [1] Imagine being able to speak normally with your computer as you would a secretary sitting next to you and have your computer accurately and quickly take notes from your speech. [2] Imagine logging onto your computer not via a user name and a password…

Example 1, if we're referring to the likes of Siri and Alexa isn't thanks to improvements in personal computer technology - said platforms send your speech recording off to a massive datacenter for processing, no need for 10Ghz processors there. Example 2 requires the use of depth-sensing and heat-sensitive cameras to avoid trivial "show a photo of an authorized user" attacks - that's not really CPU-dependent either.

Not sure if Siri and Alexa (and Google Now) send every recording to a data center - the .NET speech recognition libraries ship with Windows, so all audio data stays local to your PC, afaik. I'd expect Cortana leverages these libraries as well, instead of sending all data to a remote server.

You can build basic functionality into a speech bot in Powershell ("PowerShiri, what time is it?" "PowerShiri, what is the weather?") as a weekend project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11663029

Re: 10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

#52
post #2

So, what was the reason CPUs could not scale vertically (higher frequency)? Temperature? Stability?

Technically it was heat but mostly it was due to (i) Economics, there was less demand for faster clock speed. Otherwise more research could have gone towards solving heat problem. (ii) Each cycle of CPU was more efficient with ability to execute multiple instructions in a single cycle and with more efficient instruction sets. Surprisingly, power consumption also made huge impact. As tablets and laptops got more popul…

Single-thread performance is as important as it has ever been.

That a secretary typing a document or someone who only spends time on facebook doesn't notice the difference is irrelevant- consider, for example, the massive capital outlay by the financial industry to have servers located as closely to the world's trading hubs as possible. If they are willing to pay whatever it takes to shave milliseconds off a round trip, faster CPUs are a part of that equation.

Re: 10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

#53
post #2

So, what was the reason CPUs could not scale vertically (higher frequency)? Temperature? Stability?

Each switch of a gate causes energy to be expended. When a transistor switches, there is some current flowing and some voltage across the source and sink. That voltage * current is greater than zero, and therefore requires power. This is opposed to the stable non-switching state where there is no current and therefore no power.

So, because each switch consumes the same amount of power, the power consumed is directly proportional to the switching frequency. Double the frequency = double the power.

As other posters have alluded, Intel tried to work on the power issue by decreasing the voltage. Unfortunately, they were not able to figure out how to decrease the voltage as they had in the past. With the high power required to run high frequency circuits, cooling would have been more of a problem than could be overcome economically.

Re: 10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

#54
post #49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The functionality existed on desktop computers at the time, so it's not really a prediction.

I certainly don't remember anything of usable quality being available to end-users. My Windows 98 machine could barely play 360p videos and didn't even have a camera. The voice recognition that I do remember trying was of very low accuracy. Do you remember any specifics of where & how exactly these features were available?

Not sure about the software but webcams were available from the early 90's. I think there was an old amiga magazine that came with some facial recognition demo ware.

For voice there were things like dragon that could do reasonably accurate full voice dictation. IME it was more accurate the google voice is today because it was trained.

Moving these to the cloud is more about controlling data than it is about lack of local computing power.

Re: 10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

#55
post #24

It's interesting that while we aren't at 10 GHz quite yet, the functionality that was mentioned in the article [1][2] is here and works even on budget smartphones. -- [1] Imagine being able to speak normally with your computer as you would a secretary sitting next to you and have your computer accurately and quickly take notes from your speech. [2] Imagine logging onto your computer not via a user name and a password…

Is this really the experience of voice recognition people have? I can't get Siri to reliably create appointments... takes about 3 tries for the voice recognition to work correctly.

Re: 10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

#56
post #49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The functionality existed on desktop computers at the time, so it's not really a prediction.

I certainly don't remember anything of usable quality being available to end-users. My Windows 98 machine could barely play 360p videos and didn't even have a camera. The voice recognition that I do remember trying was of very low accuracy. Do you remember any specifics of where & how exactly these features were available?

We had people in the office in the late 90s with repetitive stress issues who were using Dragon NaturallySpeaking pretty effectively.

Re: 10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

#57
post #49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The functionality existed on desktop computers at the time, so it's not really a prediction.

I certainly don't remember anything of usable quality being available to end-users. My Windows 98 machine could barely play 360p videos and didn't even have a camera. The voice recognition that I do remember trying was of very low accuracy. Do you remember any specifics of where & how exactly these features were available?

I remember around 2007/2008 Sony VAIOs had facial recognition login. I freaked out on how decent it was, then thought about the DMV and Facebook being able to use this and really freaked out.

Re: 10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

#58
post #49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The functionality existed on desktop computers at the time, so it's not really a prediction.

I certainly don't remember anything of usable quality being available to end-users. My Windows 98 machine could barely play 360p videos and didn't even have a camera. The voice recognition that I do remember trying was of very low accuracy. Do you remember any specifics of where & how exactly these features were available?

State of the art for dictation was probably Dragon Dictate / Naturally Speaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking

Windows had an API for basic command recognition, in late 90's giving the ability to navigate through telephony menus, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Speech_API#SAPI_1-4_...

Re: 10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

#59
post #7

> Realistically speaking, we should be able to see NetBurst based processors reach somewhere between 8 – 10GHz in the next five years before the architecture is replaced yet again was a statement made by anandtech. Did Intel actually strive for those numbers?

Yes. I was working on Nehalem in 2001 as an intern, designing 10 GHz circuits. It was exciting. Even then, though, the power projections were scary. I came back in 2002 and 2003, and so I got to witness the whole project shift as people realized that 10 GHz was not going to happen.

Watching this shift motivated my research into parallel computing and its applications.

Re: 10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel’s manufacturing processes [2000]

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not enough time for electrons to move. Photons - another story.

This comment makes no sense. Neither electrons nor photons are what move through wires to propagate electrical signals.

However, you need a certain amount of electrons/charge to flow to flip a gate, because semiconductors work by filling and emptying voids in crystals. So gate speed is proportional to current, which is proportional to voltage, which is proportional to the square root of power.
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