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

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

#111

Post by krylon »

Zombieball wrote: post #48
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be the case? If we could run CPUs at 50Ghz with no problems why wouldn't we? Edit: I probably exaggerate. I just mean that higher clock speed still have benefits.

I think this "conveyor example" from Intel is a good explanation as to why: https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2014/02/19/why-has-cp... I think that you would cease to see any acceleration from increased clock speed unless you also sped up other parts of the processor / computer. I think your sentiment is correct. If we can take advantage of higher clock speeds, then why not do it?

Reminds me of something Seymour Cray (allegedly) once said: "Anyone can build a fast processor - the trick is to build a fast computer around it". Given the performance boost an SSD gives, I imagine there's some room left for improving overall system architecture without increasing the clock speed of the CPU or replacing the CPU at all.

(Caveat lector: Quoting from memory here)

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

#112

Post by Cthulhu_ »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #44

The funny part is I'm reading this article almost 2 decades later, on a CPU that's probably throttling itself down to the 1.4 ghz level... the top of the line then.

And yet, it's probably over a factor 10 faster and a factor 10 more efficient. (random numbers, I don't actually know how cpus have scaled or if they can accurately be compared)

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

#113

Post by carlob »

ma2rten wrote: post #39
kashkhan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the $80B a year in R&D is off by an order of magnitude. https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/05/intel-corporation-...

Isn't an order of magnitude 10x? According to your link they spent $12.74 billion in 2016.

Not necessarily, it could be e if you're using natural logarithms. Anyway: log10(12.74) = 1.10, log10(80) = 1.90. So, it's a little less than a full order of magnitude, but pretty close.

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

#114

Post by brianwawok »

antognini wrote: post #72

Just to give a little intuition for exactly how fast your CPU runs (assuming ~3 GHz), a single cycle takes about as much time as it takes a photon to travel from your monitor to your eyeball.

That's helpful. How many football fields is that?

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

#115

Post by brianwawok »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #70

Anecdotally, I've heard that Everquest 2 (released 2004) is still impossible to run at 60FPS with all graphical settings maxed; the devs attempted to future-proof it with speculative high-end graphics options, but they optimized for high-GHz processors which never arrived.

And it looked not that good. For the time it was fine, but it hasn't aged that well. Guess that is a good sign against future proofing your game?

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

#116

Post by krylon »

Baeocystin wrote: post #52
iamaaditya wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tr…

> faster CPUs are a part of that equation.

I think the GP did not debate that but pointed out the for CPU speed/throughput, clock speed is only part of it. Adding functional units and allowing the CPU to process more instructions in parallel can have a big impact, so can e.g. larger cache, better branch prediction and so forth.

If you give people faster CPUs, they will cheer and find something to keep them busy. ;-) And for some people, there is no such thing as "fast enough". But for a fairly large share of desktop/mobile users, the is not the limiting factor as much as memory bandwidth and I/O.

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

#117

Post by tgb »

rhplus wrote: post #58
Strom wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_...

Oh yeah, very practical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec

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

#118

Post by vijucat »

new299 wrote: post #55
Strom wrote: 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.

The "OK, Google" voice interface on Android, whatever it's brand name is, is amazing. Do try it out. It's able to understand me even with a lot of noise (street sounds).

Also, there might be something wrong with the mic if you're using an external bluetooth mic?

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

#119

Post by bhouston »

userbinator wrote: post #106

Over a decade later, even overclockers haven't managed to reach 10GHz --- but some have come close: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-fx-8150-overclock-9ghz-... At 10GHz, light travels approximately 3cm between each period of the clock. Note that transistors which operate above 10GHz are not rare and used in microwave applications; as I understand it, the difficulty is in creating logic circuits with them and at a…

> 10GHz, light travels approximately 3cm between each period of the clock

Light doesn't change speed, so this statement confuses me.

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

#120

Post by mschaef »

amelius wrote: post #105
wmf wrote: post #11

Article says: Obviously this 8 – 10GHz clock range would be based on Intel’s 0.07-micron process that is forecasted to debut in 2005. These processors will run at less than 1 volt, 0.85v being the current estimate. Intel introduced a 65 nm (0.065 micron) process in 2006. The "Cedar Mill" Pentium 4 processor ran at 3.6 GHz at a whopping 1.3V although a small double-pumped part of the processor ran at 7.2 GHz. It could…

> Although the transistors can technically run at 9 GHz, the resulting power density is very difficult to cool. But nowadays we have processors with multiple cores, where sometimes you need only 1 core (and it needs to be fast). So would it be an idea to increase clock frequency for those cores, but multiplex them quickly to allow them to cool?

Other people have covered Intel's TurboBoost feature, but this reminds me of something GM did with the Cadillac Northstar V8 back in the early 90's.

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

When the engine did NOT have coolant, it would run only one bank of cylinders at a time and alternate between the two to let them cool.

The system was at least somewhat effective. There's a story from the time about a journalist that was testing the feature in the desert. He stopped at a truck stop after conducting the test and amazed the folks at the stop by opening the hood, filling the engine with coolant, and driving off like nothing was amiss.

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