Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

anandtech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 180 posts

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

#121

Post by rasz_pl »

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?

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

introduced in ~2007 in Core 2 mobile CPUs (Penryns I think). You can load Middleton modded bios into your oldshool Thinkpad R61/T61 and it will enable dual IDA[1] in top CPUs.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/t61-x61-sata-ii-1-5-...

You can even load modded(by chinese) modded middleton bios, solder one wire and plop $8 T9550 CPU for 2.66GHz boosting to 2.8GHz. You could even use quads, but its beyond uneconomical with cpus being more than whole used thinkpad T420.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=110620

This was Intels first steps and not a lot of OEMs enabled IDA. Turbo Boost was next, introduced in Nahalems.

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

[1] dual IDA is a trick forcing IDA on both cores. Throttlestop utility is also able to turn it on.

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

#122

Post by Baeocystin »

krylon wrote: post #116
Baeocystin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. ;-)…

I don't disagree with that statement in a general sense. But what earns Intel its money and marketplace dominance? The cheap Celeron/Pentium-class chips sold in bargain laptops & Best Buy specials? Or the high-end, single-thread performance chips?

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

#124

Post by n00b101 »

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?

The general term for that is Dark Silicon [1]. It helps a little and as, others have pointed out, Intel CPUs already have a similar feature called "Turbo Boost." NVIDIA processors also have a similar "GPU Boost" feature. But I don't know if that can enable a single core to run at 10GHz. Shutting off other cores does not lower the local power density / thermal dissipation of the single core at 10GHz. You still have to work hard to cool that single core, in order to prevent the silicon from being damaged.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_silicon

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

#126

Post by n00b101 »

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…

Also interesting is that modern speech and image recognition runs on NVIDIA GPUs using neural networks, with the Intel CPU relegated to playing a supporting actor role. GPUs also face the same Dennard scaling problem, and don't run anywhere close to 10GHz, but their microarchitecture makes better use of the available silicon/power for parallel numerical computing problems.

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

#127

Post by mikepurvis »

n00b101 wrote: post #124
amelius wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The general term for that is Dark Silicon [1]. It helps a little and as, others have pointed out, Intel CPUs already have a similar feature called "Turbo Boost." NVIDIA processors also have a similar "GPU Boost" feature. But I don't know if that can enable a single core to run at 10GHz. Shutting off other cores does not lower the local power density / thermal dissipation of the single core at 10GHz. You still have to…

Right, but the suggestion is that when "one core" is running, you switch around which core it is that's actually hot, so they're taking turns generating the heat.

Obviously there's some cost there in sharing registers, cache, etc, but it's an interesting notion.

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

#128

Post by theandrewbailey »

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.

299,792,458 meters/second ÷ 3,000,000,000/second = 9.99 cm

Just how close are you sitting to your monitor?

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

#129

Post by mox1 »

jlebrech wrote: post #123

I've always wondered why the need for ghz, isn't mips what you're looking for. wouldn't a 50mhz 1000 core cpu do well with decent parallelism in a compiler? how many cycles does the average method/function/procedure need anyway?

The main problem is that generic parallelism is hard, and doesn't give you a straight X multiple speed up[1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_computing#Amdahl.27s_...

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

#130

Post by brandmeyer »

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?

While the clock speed has largely stagnated, the actual work done per cycle, even on just one core, has gone up significantly. Consider: A double-precision fused multiply-add consumes only 4 cycles of result latency today. The number of memory operations (and other instructions) in flight at any given moment has gone up dramatically, the number of execution units has gone up a little bit (so that the maximum instruction-level parallelism is higher), and so on.

Its not the rapid growth of the 90's and early 2000's, but it is still growth.

Post reply on HN