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Intel Promises A Cool Billion (Transistors)
NevDull writes: "CNN is reporting that Intel has announced new semiconductor packaging which will lead to CPUs with a billion transistors running at 20GHz within 6 years. Yummy!" The advance here is removing the balls of solder between the chip's packaging and the microprocessor core, which leaves room for more transistors (or a thinner package). Like it says, though, this is years away from your pocket Cray.
I guess I'll to replace my current system at least twice over the next six years to keep up...
That's a lotta trasistors!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Why would any CPU manufacturer attempt to predict processor design & clock speed six years into the future? It will be 2007 before this statement can be tested for validity at which point processor design could have changed drastically. Perhaps I should phone Cleo and ask her what the bus speed of my motherboard will be in 2010?
Hagabard
And as usual, Motorola and IBM will develop this technology first and promise chips as fast as 25 GHz. But in reality, the first IBM/Moto chips will come at 12 GHz at about the time that Intel releases their 20 GHz chips.
Apple will introduce the chips in it's new iHyperMac which is the size of a quarter with a holographic display but they will be running downclocked to 10 GHz for marketing reasons.
Are they going to continue stretching the pipeline to get these "improved clock speeds"? I personally don't care if it runs at 20 GHz. I want performance.
That's Mr. Eradicator to you.
trance-port
Intel already removed the balls from a processor... it was called "Celeron".
Can You Imagine A Beowulf Cluster Intel CPUS with a billion transistors running at a flaming 20GHz SHOVED  UP  YOUR  ASS?!!!!
Like it says, though, this is years away from your pocket Cray.
:-)
Agreed, but this would not be the case if we built computers for one specific purpose - which is exactly what most Crays do. The cheap and abundant processors today have a redundant instruction set with a lot of flaws, and are not made for any specific app.
If we had RISC processors made for very specific purposes, I'm sure we'd be able to walk around a cray in our pocket
If I tried to put that thing in my pocket it'd burn a hole through my leg!
to create an OS so bloated that you need a 20 Ghz chip to run it. ::Sigh::
If I can't see it in Lynx I'm not interested.
We have pocket Crays already, in a manner of speaking. How fast was a Cray in the middle/late 80s?
-- Cheers!
Except that clock speed is becoming a useless benchmark. At what point do we realize that Intel's 20 Ghz machine and AMD's 12 Ghz machine have an unnoticable speed difference? If they were talking about a pocket cray as suggested, yes, I guess there is a use for it. They're not talking about supercomputing, they're talking about Pentium 4's!!! At 20 Ghz you'd have to slow the thing down to play Diablo!!
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Does this mean it will run cooler?
My life is one big siesta in which I'm dreaming I wished my life was one big siesta.
It is like playing Pool or Radiance or Balder's Gate, or some other quest adventure. There is no question you're going to win the game. The fun it how you get there! And, in this case, the fun is watching how to get to an obscenely dense level of electronics running at an amazingly fast speed. ;)
With that many transistors running at X GHz, will Intel be providing a fusion plant to run this thing? With some small duct works, you could even use it to heat your house!
Seriously, though, who knows what other kind of breakthroughs are going to be made that may obsolete this? There are advances being made in optical and even quantum computing all the time. Someone is even working on a biological hard drive using DNA strands!
My 1/50 $ (US)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
If only it were so - but looking back on the development later new cpu generations I'd bet it's going to be a HOT billion...
requirements for cooling of new cpus are becoming ever more demanding, just the cpu can burn in excess of 50W in existing cpus.
So, for my own requirements I'm more interested in getting an (energy) efficient system that can run with as few fans and noise as possible - it's practically impossible nowerdays to get a box where CPU power is NOT sufficient for even the most demanding tasks. The downside is that most modern boxes seem to be best suited for running flight simulators - at least they sound like jet engines.
Also if you're working in an office with a lot of computers, the heat output of computers and monitors can be VERY noticyble, esp. in summer. (No, there's no aircondition in my office).
Hopefully the new technology will not only be used to reate overpowerd energy hogs but also find its way into (mobile?) processors - same cpu core as existing cpu, but smaller layout, lower core voltage and correspondlingly much cooler/more silent.
you have moved your mouse, please reboot to make this change take effect
A cray in your pocket? It would better have some good cooling then, or you'd get some nice pick up lines.
Him: Hey, baby, you make me feel *hot*.
Her: Just take that cray out of your pants, geek boy.
I intend to live forever, so far so good.
I remember thinking when I owned a 486 that these new Pentium processors were going to have my box starting up in under 5 seconds and running my chosen apps soon after. WRONG. New and "essential" features combined with bloated code meant that just wasn't going to happen. None of the systems I use will boot in under 20 seconds.
OK someone could run early 90's software on todays machines but just don't expect your files to work on anybody elses software (without tweaking anyway).
I could be wrong but I think history says I won't be.
This just killed my high from ordering a 1.4Gig Athlon with a gig of RAM :-( I was hoping to be a stud at least for a day...
Why would any CPU manufacturer attempt to predict processor design & clock speed six years into the future? It will be 2007 before this statement can be tested for validity at which point processor design could have changed drastically. Perhaps I should phone Cleo and ask her what the bus speed of my motherboard will be in 2010?
Well...let's take a look at this as it compares to Moore's Law, which says, essentially, that the top speed of microprocessors will double every 18 months.
6 years = 6 * 12 = 72 months
72 months/18 months = 4x doubling
Therefore, CPUs should be 2^4 = 16 times faster in 6 years. This means you'd see an Intel chip running at 32GHz, and an AMD chip running at 24.5GHz (but called the "Athlon 30K", of course, and benching faster than the Intel chip AND providing enough heat to warm a small city)
Sounds like these predictions are a little lower than we'd like to see...
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
Now we will have a 20GHz processor which will tell us that 4+4 is 7.9999999999 approximately :-D
Well, it would be a Pocket SGI, wouldn't it? Palm OS with 1024 bit math! I can just imagine the sales pitch:
"How many times have you been sitting on the bus, in need of some quick supercomputing? You're 20 minutes from the office and you just need to solve Planck's Theorem RIGHT NOW. That's why you need the Palm 2.5e+12!"
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
Moore's Law has nothing to do with hertz!
It is about the number of transistors per integrated circuit.
I have to commend Intel for trying to tackle a problem that is daunting at best. But there are enough problems with existing IC packages that need to be taken care of between now and then. These include:
1. High-speed signal isolation - two wires switching at enormous speeds like 10GHz are going to have effects on other signals in the package. There's enough trouble with this on high-speed multi-gigabit-per-second interfaces and even Rambus' crap TODAY. With signals packed in so close, how are they going to manage this tomorrow when the current memory bus is already at 3.2Gb/s? At 10GHz+, how hungry will the processor be for memory bandwidth? It's a fight between lower-speed highly-parallel signaling for density and higher-speed low-density serial signaling for signal integrity. A smaller package isn't going to help this. A larger package, even with fewer layers, will only aggravate signal coupling.
2. Power delivery and consumption - on some packages, up to 30% of the total connections are for I/O and core power delivery. Making these smaller as Intel proposes will not help matter, considering that switching at 10GHz is going to make power consumption skyrocket. How do they expect to get the power to the chip? People have enough problems today trying to bump their processor voltages up when they attempt to overclock. This is only going to get exponentially more difficult.
3. Die attach and reliability - I know they want to have solderless connections to the package. This is good - currently alpha particles from solder will occasionally cause false switching in memory elements. But with lots of heat cycles from power cycling up and down and questionable assembly yields that are usually tolerant to less than 0.5% from raw die to package. We take for granted the fact that the die will stay attached to the package today. How they will get the reliability to that point is beyond me, even if they've made a "major" stride. How do they account for field failures or age-related failures in a test lab?
4. Substrate material - the package material itself is critical to thermal matching on the board as well as to signal integrity inside the package. At the speeds they propose will the current substrates be sufficient for reducing signal coupling? As usual, material science is again lagging behind the rest, and we need far more research into exotic materials to be able to get fast packages going.
So, to me I think there's going to have to be larger packages with advanced cooling. I'm not going to get too excited. I certainly don't think that Intel will be able to take this course alone. What I forsee happening is to have new committees set up specifically for packaging as there are for IC process technology today. It's too capital and research intensive to be able to get away from having to use committees.
go back to 1995. ask Intel when Merced(now Itanium) would be out. now ask them how fast it would be in late 2001. now understand that what they say about 6 years in the future isn't worth a flying fuck
Actually Moore's law doesn't deal purely with processor "speed", it deals with computing "power". Thus a chip at differing clock speeds could have the same functional power. I refer to this article which refers to the P4 2Ghz being the same power as the Athlon 1.4Ghz. These "power" differences can be the result of better pipelining and other chip features. Thus an exact analysis of Moore's law in relation to a 20Ghz chip is tougher. What isn't to say that a drastic change in chip design won't allow for a 10 fold increase in chip "power". Not that I don't think the article isn't overblown, but Moore's law isn't really a factor here.
According to the article:
Currently, Intel's Pentium 4 microprocessor -- the primary computing engine of personal computers and servers -- has about 42 million transistors and runs at two gigahertz.
I like fire ants. They are very spicy!
Unfortunately you'll have to wait 20% longer than the proposed release date of the ps4 to actually get one. (/joke)
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
With a billion + Transistors ,what will be the heat resistances and what sort of cooling will be required?Can anyone throw a few numbers.
I suppose we shall move back to boiling N2 of cray fame...
Wanted : A Signature.
I think it is great that processor technology is dontinuing to evolve and break through many technical limitations in the past few years. However my larger concern is with the I/O bottlenecks that are becoming more and more of a problem now that chips are running faster and faster. When is the next great breakthough in RAM technology going to come?
Until we can start pumping 100+Gb/s to the processor, most of the power is wasted while it waits to fetch memory.
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
"Removing the balls of solder between the chip's packaging and the microprocessor core"...
Well, sure, that'd give you lots more room for transistors... It'd also give you a lot more room for defects to creep in. This is functionally no different from expanding the die size to the point where the CPU size is the same. While it might be less expensive than cutting fewer chips per wafer, it does nothing to increase the reliability of the process.
I think this is more of a pricing advance, and you'll see this lowering the cost of existing processor layouts, since you can decrease the die size without affecting the CPU design. But CPU size increases will still result in lower yield.
Imagine.
Just today, Intel announced the release of the Pentium 5 processor. The new processor runs at 50 Ghz. It features a 300-stage pipeline. It will take 2 minutes for each instruction to complete on average. But to optomize, programmers can send 1800 intructions at a time, as long as they have no dependence on each other at all.
Before I upgrade my new laptop. Wow, just imagine how fast the games will be at that speed. It'll damn sure make for some fun LAN parties. No more having to worry about lugging a desktop around either! Hopefully by that time Gig fiber to the house won't be just a dream anymore either!
This will be key in driving down the cost of computing, as custom logic will always be more expensive than commodity logic.
While I would expect these developments to also obviously drive down the cost of developing custom logic, volume production will always make commodity logic more cost effective.
a billion somethings, 20 giga whatevers... Someday... What does this new package do NOW? How much faster will it move heat off the die? How much did they drop the capitance getting off to the fiberglass? Is there any REAL technical advantage or is this just another attempt to shake AMD off their tail by requiring more proprietary hardware? Just wondering. ZH
Eventually the masses will interact with computers by speech and video. Text and keybords will be secondary. Current computers cant quite do this yet, but how much is software versus hardware?
Intel today announced its new 1024-bit (1 kilobit) microprocessor architecture technology. Named the Shiitakeum, Intel's new processor core boasts powerful new technologies which will enable content providers to deliver compelling enterprise solutions.
The Shiitakeum incorporates the following new features:
* SingleAtom technology squeezes one thousand transistors into a single atom.
* The processing pipeline has been broken down into 299,792,458 discreet steps, enabling Intel to remove the internal clock altogether and run the processor at the speed of light. One "cycle" represents the absolute cosmic measure unit of time, and all operations occur in one cycle. (Compete with that, AMD! Bwahaahahahaha!!)
* 24,856 new instructions have been added since the previous model, bringing the new total to over 72 trillion instructions. The entire UNIX operating system can be programmed in one instruction!
* RAM has been depreciated. 4 terabytes of internal general-use registers allow software to make more efficient data access, providing a more compelling Internet experience.
* Intel (r) AnswerNow (tm) Technology bends the space-time continuum, allowing the results of branch instructions and mathematical operations to be used before they are computed. The computations take place during idle cycles at some future time.
* Intel (r) CodeSpirit (tm) Technology processes machine code by its spirit, rather than its letter, completely eliminating software bugs and preventing malicious code, such as a virus, from executing.
* Intel (r) AlienCode (tm) Technology, based on CodeSpirit, allows users to execute programs written for any other processor, without previous knowledge of that processor's instruction set. The technology examines and "decyphers" the instructions and data in much the same way that scientists decypher written languages used by past civilizations. Via AnswerNow and CodeSpirit technologies, programs written for other processors actually run faster and better on Intel platforms than on their native processor. As a side effect, the processor now directly executes programs and scripts written in Java or any P-code or text-based language. In fact, even instructions spelled out in English are understood and executed by the processor.
* Intel (r) BrainWaves (tm) Technology allows the processor to read and write information in the user's mind. The processor is given away for free, and based on the user's thoughts, targetted advertisements are inserted directly into the user's mind. The process is painless, and simply feels like a song stuck in your head. A nominal (i.e., expensive) fee can be paid daily to eliminate the advertisements.
The Intel Shiitakeum Processor. Mushrooms Inside.
Two bad IBM has Promised 100ghz within a year or two. Seriously.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
As for "code bloat" - deal with it, you are getting something bacl. Look at the memeory consumption for KDE2 vs. blackbox. sure, you are using ten times the memory, but in return you are getting a great deal of functionality. Your computer is there to be used, not preserved. Why not fill up that RAM? Why not saturate that CPU?
Intel has more info on this (both pdf's):
This backgrounder (4 pages, 17kb) has a basic diagram showing the change.
This briefing (18 pages, 2466kb) is a presentation, but actually has some nice detail. It has some photographs of the devices, better diagrams, and a picture of a naked man in the shower (really!).
I'll summerize:
PGA packaging (as used in many big processors) is basically a ceramic or fiberglass carrier board with pins on one side, wires in the middle (like a small PC board), and some method to directly attach to the chip. The chip is usually connected to the board with small solder balls, like BGAs, but on a smaller scale. The balls provide some flexibility and loose tolerances, but since they are bigger than the wires they connect they require a fairly large pad on the chip. This technology is a way eliminate these balls, allowing for smaller pads, freeing up more area on the die.
But you should check out the pictures -- they describe it better than I do.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Why's everyone banging on about whether this beats or lags Moore's law, or even worse denigrating with a 'duh! it's just Moore's Law'?
Moore's law isn't something that just happens, everyone sits back and magically chips get better. Moore's law holds cause there's a whole bunch of bright people doing stuff like this.
If you're not interested in gaining an insight into the work driving Moore's Law, then skip this article.
On the other hand, I'm more interested in reducing power consumption. My laptop hogs at most 30W, modern desktops may use ten times that. I'm sick of hearing of California's power outages and the like, when the technology for power saving is already there.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Who cares! As expensive as Intel is over AMD now, that chip will probably be around the cost of a new car or something..
>The advance here is removing the balls of solder between the chip's packaging and the microprocessor core
:)
Was I the only one who twitched when reading this?
oh man... I am a geek..... help!!
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I really feel I need 20 GHz. Anything that shaves even a few minutes off my day is very welcome. Considering just the work I do now, a 20 GHz processor might make my day 10% shorter.
If I had that speed I would do a lot of video processing. I also hope there would be good voice recognition. Long waits for compiling would disappear.
Bush's education improvements were
This is a *GREAT* comment. Please mod this up, it is worth it even though it was posted AC. It's a lot better than the standard, "Hey, look how fast I can run Diablo II now!" comments.
Anyway, by committees do you mean standards organizations similar to IEEE groups? I completely agree with that point, it would really help to get the research moving along. Unfortunately, I think many of the IC manufacturers are too worried about squeezing every last cent out of their current technologies before they put the newer technologies on the market. Really, there is no rush to market new technologies as long as they are still making money, and people are happy with the current products. That is what often cause the technology to stay behind closed doors for longer. A standards committee could help get things to market more quickly???
- Has the signal distance reduction (less layers) been cut sufficiently to allow the 10X increase in speed?
- Is the density of transistors currently limited by the layers, and finally
- (sort of a cross betweern the first two questions) Assuming that the 10X increase is possible, doesn't it require that the same kind of technology be used for all of the remaining high speed chips?
The observation is related to the second item. For the sake of discussion, let us assume that the "bumpless" technology is the absolute best state of the art for a while. Will the fact that Intel has patented the technology give them a de-facto monopoly on ultra high speed/high performance chips, and if so, is this really good news or not?...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
need a 500Mhz Athlon to run the cooling system?
/.'s database will eventually lose every one of my +3 or higher posts, sooner or later when there is database cor*&^%@
That, my friends would be the ultimate irony.
(because you know darn well Intel'l lowest end proc available will be the 19.3333 celeron IV).
Moose.
(top 2 reasons to mod me up:
2) I'm funny, insightful and informative damnit
1)
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
This story should be renamed "This just in from the is this really necessary department". 20 ghz?, my fingers only type at one speed....pretty soon the slowest part of the computer is going to be human. :)
"I have gone to look for myself, If I return before I get back keep me here"
I almost dread computers going that fast. Just another excuse to make bloated code. But that might not be a bad thing. Mozilla might even be considered "lean and mean". Seriously though, this isn't addressing the other computer problems. Oh, like say the BUS SPEED. RAM isn't really making leaps and bounds compaired to speed either. And if hard drives only manage to improve at the rate they have been, virtual memory will be a gigantic disaster in terms of performance loss.
The other good news is that AMD processors will keep your computer clean as they will combust small particles that enter your computer case. Although hardware people will be very displeased at not being able to look directly at the CPU unless the computer has been shut off for 15 minutes to allow for cooling.
Maybe it's a perception thing, but I feel like my compile times stay constant no matter how much I upgrade my machine. Perhaps it's memory bandwidth or hard drive access, or perhaps it just that I've moved from ASM to C to C++ to (god help me) C#...
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
While this will be cool, it's not amazing. (Neither is the fact that that computer will come with about 10GB of RAM.)
--Ben
At clock speeds approaching 20 GHz, it seems there would be not only manufacturing problems to overcome, but physics problems as well.
Some quick math:
20 Gigahertz = 20*10^9 Hz (1/seconds)
For time per cycle, 1/(20*10^12) = 5*10^-11 seconds per cycle
Speed of light = 3*10^8 meters/sec
In 1 cycle, light will travel (3*10^8) * (5*10^11) = 0.015 meters = 1.5 centimeters per cycle.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this roughly approaching the size of the die? I know Intel's a big company, but I think someone might get a little upset if they try and break the laws of physics.
No. In fact, 640k aught to be enough for anyone!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I guess the moderation system works after all.
"When the lights go down in the city" to all the people in California/Silicon valley.
/. moderators have proven me wrong...metamoderation rules, obvious trolls = agree, otherwise don't moderate or *disagree*)
(This is not a troll, if you don't get it that says more about you than it does me. It's meant to be funny...if it does not amuse you, then don't mod it up or mod it down.
"I was raised to belive there was *some* good in everyboday" Pacha in 'The Emp. New Groove'.
Unfortunately, recent
Moose
PS. IF you've read the far, don't you agree it's sad when you have to put disclaimers up just trying to make a __JOKE__?
When moderators attack, tonite at 8pm.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
- raw processing power is way oversold
- machines are too damn noisy
I wonder, though if the CPU is the main culprit. A small, 50 watt gizmo doesn't generate that much heat. It's true that CPUs often have heat dissipation problems, but only because so much heat is generated in such a small space.On the other hand, we still use the basic IBM layout for PCs, where a huge transformer is mounted inside the box. That so-noisy fan is there primarily to cool the transformer. Even with hotter and hotter CPUs, the cooling needs of the rest of the computer have actually decreased over the years, because systems use fewer and fewer chips.
This design was obsolete two decades ago, when it was first introduced. Manufacturers at that time were moving to external power supplies, which can dissipate heat through radiation. Unfortunately, any computer not profoundly compatible with IBM's original quick-and-dirty design is now commercially nonviable.
more like half naked man. I followed that link for no reason!
"No one will smell that."
Standards are all fine and good -- but the design by comittee nature hinders time to market. Anyone have examples of standards that were finished before a competing non-standard was on the market?
If I recall correctly the original specs for the P4 stated a much larger cache and higher FPU. Then Intel found out that they would have to sell them for some insane price, like 1200 bucks, to make any kind of profit.
So, what did they do?
They clipped the FPU down to practically nothing, cut down the cache. Broke the JIT functionality and made the chip only able to really churn out specially optimized C code with any kind of speed.
Sorry, but MANY companies still use and program in COBOL, FORTRAN and PASCAL. Before any of you claim those are "dead" languages, remember that these languages run programs that have been in use on mainframes, companies spent millions/billions on, for more than 20 years. COBOL recently had some WWW extensions started or discussed a year or two ago as well.
I honestly have to question Intel's future processor roadmaps and production products when they show off things that are really to pricey for them to mass produce. It would be awesome if Intel was able to release the P4 like the original specs were. I would have one right now. The only thing is they didn't and the chip just ramps up the megaherts, but doesn't really do all that much more.
--
. sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
There's only one foreseeable problem with Moore's Law.... Reaching the theoretical limits of the architecture. While this trend does seem to be continuing, at some point technology used in the architecture or the architecture itself will have to be changed as. The technologies used in the current computer architecture are reaching their theoretical limits, so to continue the trend proposed by Moore's Law, some great advancements will have to be made. This is why some of these stories about 20Ghz are so amazing, or promising at least.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
it allready is, the normal user is no longer limited by the speed of his/her computer. Like you said, you can only type so fast... Its time something more CPU intensive like a holodeck comes along....
Sig you!
Before wishing for a pocket Cray, according to: http://www.dg.com/about/html/cray-1.html the Cray-1 was a 160 MFlop machine.
I'm not sure how to equate that to X86 floating point, or even what the Cray-1 clock speed was, and I realize that it was a quarter century ago. But I think that modern garden-variety PCs are in or above the Cray-1 performance realm.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I hate to complain, here I go anyway. Moores law isn't a law. Its a fabrication. If I say that according to "Bills Law" the number of transistors in a CPU will grow linearly with the gross domestic product of Bulgaria you'd laugh at me. In truth, however, that's *almost* as valid as Moore's law.
Comparing Intels predictions (as wildly optimistic as they are) to Moore's law is therefore about as productive as trying to teach a duck to sing Ave Maria in Latin
Ok, I feel better know. I'm gonna go get a beer
i think they're referring to this article from Sept. 4: http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/cst-fin-mo to04.html
also, IBM discussed this in 1998 and estimated it would be about 5 years before it became commercially viable, which is still consistent with this report re: Motorola's process. It would also have favorable implications to ALL chip manufacturing, not just core processors. It's nothing new, theoretically, just new and revolutionary in a practical sense.
Wouldn't you love a Beowulf Cluster of these things!!
Come on, it had to be said.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2089968,00. html
;).
This articall basically talks about that new 210 GHz transistor IBM announced back around June.
It's a ZDnet atical, so there's not much about who IBM will licence this technology to. Odds are Power and PowerPC chips will probably take use of this within the next year or so. Sound cool.
I'd advise a google search if you want more info
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Why buy an Intel 20GHz CPU for $n when you can get an AMD 14GHz CPU for $(n/2) which beats the Intel 20GHz CPU in almost all benchmark tests?
Just don't forget not to remove the heat sink.
damn typos. errr
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I wonder... Intel is touting this breakthrough, which should affect chip design for all kinds of chips and on Sept. 4, Sun-Times reported that Motorola had firmed up the design and manufacturing processes for using Gallium Arsenide as a binding agent to greatly enhance capabilities into the 50+ ghz range. IBM discussed this process as a future breakthrough situation that would likely occur within 5 years... back in 1998, as reported on CNet.
Dunno about anyone else; maybe it's the attack on the Taliban - but I read "balls of solder" as "balls of the soldier."
Had to do a double-take on that one.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Fast times at Motorola
IBM advances chip speeds - Tech News - CNET...
Heh, redundant. I was one of the first 10 posters on this subject and I get a "redundant" hit. Hey Moderators! Read the friggin time stamp!
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
print "\n\nThe Magic Perl will entertain some queries now.\n\n";
my $quit = 0;
until ($quit) {
print "What is your yes/no question for the Magic Perl? \n";
my $ques = <STDIN>;
chomp $ques;
my @q_ans = (
"Yes.",
"No.",
"Maybe",
"My sources say, \"Yes.\"",
"My sources say, \"No.\"",
"These are not the droids you're looking for, move along.",
"You are not ready to hear the answer for that.",
"11.",
"The answer you seek is within you.",
"Certainly.",
"No way.",
"nowonmai...",
"Doh!",
"How the Hell should I know?",
"You must learn control.",
);
my $rand = rand @q_ans;
my $ans = $q_ans[$rand];
print qq(\nYou dared to ask "$ques":\nThe Magic Perl says, "$ans"\nThe Magic Perl has spoken.\n);
print qq(\nDo you have another question for the Magic Perl? Type "y" to ask.\n);
my $again = <STDIN>;
chomp ($again);
if ($again eq 'y'){
$quit = 0;
} elsif ($again ne 'y'){
print "The Magic Perl grows weary of your queries anyway! \n\n";
$quit = 1;
}
}
This
This has got to be the worst written tech artical of the year. It was barley intelligable. I was reminded of a Nun trying to explaining sex to 6 year olds.
Easy Bake Processors*!!
Cook your favorite Goodies, and process your RC5/SETI packets fast! Purchase the Space heater for those cold nights in the Dorm/Batchlor-pad *Keep away from combustable material, do not touch Processor, Case, or desk. Intel coproration is not responcable for injury or death.
Anime : Drugs would be cheaper
insert 'maybe we'll have something to run WindowsXP on properly' joke here
Seriously though, we'll need chips like this once we are doing holographic projection at home. That requires ALOT of cpu power. It's a way off, but it will happen eventually.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
The cool billion concept is cool, but it also points out that the processor paridigm is locked in for another 6 years.
It is my hope that within 6 yrs there is a greater focus on the -way- the little "ones" and "zeros" are processed, not necessarily how much faster it is done based on current standards.
I am me...I think
20GHz in 6 years? Sounds slow to me.
current speeds are at 2G 2 X 2 = 4GHz in 18 months
4 X 2 = 8GHz in 3 years. 8 X 2 = 16GHz and then 16 x 2 = 32GHz in 6 years. So why is IBM falling behind?
Ascii artist &
Refering to your last paragraph, I think cooling will require a larger portion of the total CPU costs in future. This is already true for todays CPU compared to older ones that only required passive cooling.
The main problems with the current cooling concept is that air has a very small heat capacity which means that you have to circulate a lot of air in order to remove a certain amount of heat, and second that only a small temperature difference T(CPU) - T(ambient) is allowed which makes cooling very inefficient. As a consequence, cooling by air will be replaced soon by other technologies that move the heat dump away from the processor (e.g. liquid cooling circuits, preferably liquids colder than room temperature). Cooling to below room temperature will be standard as this opens the possibility for even higher clock rates with only small additional hardware costs (running costs will be a lot higher of course).
The next step will be cooling facilities integrated into the chip (think of dedicated copper lines running from problematic 'hot spots' to the cooling interface).
Isn't it time to concentrate the innovation on
these areas? How does a xGhz CPU help speed up
work on a 300Mb graphic?
The problem with this idea is that the MHz goes up a lot, but the actual CPU speed may not (for instance, the P4 can do up to (roughly) 40 things at once - but if it fails branch-prediction, it can spend almost 40 clock cycles just regenerating the instruction path. Shorter pipelines are faster during heavily branched code, longer pipelines generally improve integer-math-heavy code.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Anyone else feel cheated? Moore's law states a doubling should occur every 18 months. 6 years is four doublings but, instead of 32 GHz, we get 20.....what a crock....;)
E
Elian Paiuk
Check out your hard drive ... my compile is disk load bound on a medium size project, I would expect any project with more than 10 meg of source code or so, particularly with a lot of small files would tend to be disk bound on most modern machines.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
According to Moores law shouldnt they be at 32ghz in 6 years (based upon their current 2ghz processor)?
disclaimer : My views do not represent those of every one else in slashdot.
The fact that IBM say in 6 years we'll be at 20Ghz is purely to show where the tech could possibly go, it definitely isn't a serious prediction. By then another technology or possibly a combination of technologies will have superceded this one. For now, though, this is cool. Where can I buy one?
The 'fun' should no longer be about how 'amazingly fast' the obscenely dense level of electrons run at, but instead in how these obscenely dense electrons get switched and managed.
So Intel can eleminate some more resistance, by removing some metal from the connections between CPU and Mobo, which will undoubtably lead to faster cpu / bus speeds. What I am still waiting to see, though, is something innovative, like the combining of multiple processor cores in one chip, or even *gasp* the development of an entirely new architecture..... You can only make a 2 cylinder engine do so much work. Increase the demand for work, and you'd better design a engine with more power, not just greater speed.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars) Hm..... How many chars is 120? I suppose I could count them
That'd be interesting. Find out how many BTUs a machine generates. Compare to how many BTUs are generated by a human performing the same task (even if this requires a week of pencil-scribbling-maths(tm)). Will the Px 20Ghz be more efficient than the human? Should we be working towards this efficiency, if it hasnt yet been reached? As thermal output is (usually) linked to power consumption, I assume this would ensure minute power requirements... Burn no holes in your pockets.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars) Hm..... How many chars is 120? I suppose I could count them
Have you tried using a RAM drive? You should be able to save the source or output on it. (Of course if you loose power you're boned) It's been a long time since I've had the need for one, so I can't remember the name of the proggy. You can probably find in on tucows, or another shareware site.
Chika Chik-ah... do-e ow ow.
Actually, I know of not a single mainframe running on Intel anythings. However, the programmers in the R&D team at my office program on PC desktops. Currently they are using Pentium III processors and are using a COBOL IDE.
I am all for moving forward with technology. I would also like to see what is being used for the forseeable future to be supported.
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?