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Intel Looks to Billion-Transistor Processors

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the runs-almost-as-hot-as-the-athlon dept.

Weedstock writes: "EE Times has an article about Intel's next decade roadmap. It explains what are the current issues with the actual "plastic bumped organic land grid array" packaging technology and how it will be modified into a "bumpless package with built-up layers" to accomodate billion-transistor processors."

1 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Why?! by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 1, Troll

    Who needs a BILLION transistors in a processor, for crying out loud?! Let me tell you something. A slow 4- or 8-bit processor can execute amazing things when coded correctly. Embedded developers have interfaced these processors to memory, hard drives, CD-ROMs, the ISA and PCI busses, and just about every kind of peripheral out there. I'm beginning to think that a fully functional and FAST computer can be built with NO x86 processor, but with about $20.00 (US) worth of these cheap, slow and small processors. It's the software that needs to be engineered correctly, and I'm afraid that nearly all software out there isn't.

    What happened to the good ol' days when programmers--real programmers--wrote very clever, small and fast programs? When it had to be written correctly or it didn't work?

    Try explaining to me why nearly all hardware needs to be engineered correctly, for a minimum of components and a maximum of performance, yet nearly all software is slopped together, taking up tens or hundreds of megs and running noticeably slow on today's powerhouse machines. You know what? There's no excuse.

    I've seen a hard real time operating system coded in 700 words. I've seen processors with 128 bytes of RAM control industrial robotics. Speaking of industrial stuff, I've seen an automation system that packs a real time operating system, high speed communication, interactive user interface (including full control of the display hardware), and all the automation software... in 20 kilobytes. Seeing this, I cannot understand why something simple like a word processor program should be several megs in size (and why it should hog a ton of memory).

    So back to the billion transistors question... why? Why should the processor have to predict the next mess of instructions, load them into a cache, find out it predicted incorrectly, dump the cache, find the correct location, load the instructions... Why are processors marketed by their internal clock speed when they spend most of their time waiting for data? And above all, why does software suck so badly?

    OH WELL.

    The Lord of the Rings. The book rocks. The movie sucks. Yeah, it SUCKS! I left the theater halfway through it. It SUCKS! But the book is awesome.

    OH WELL.