Intel To Produce 65-Nanometer Chips In 2005

Ridgelift writes "In keeping with Moore's Law, Intel will begin mass-producing chips using 65-nanometer process technology in 2005, according to a ZDNet article (additional coverage at EE Times and The Inquirer). Intel recently produced a Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) cell at 0.57 square microns, in comparison to 90-nanometer process measuring 1 square micron. "You can get a 40 to 50 percent increase in clock speed with no further improvements" says Intel director Mark Bohr."

Comments

Fart Toast!

[Anonymous Coward]

Simonigger to have 65 nanometer penis thanks to genetic engineering!

Re:Fart Toast!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 65 centimeter hard-on while reading this article.

thats all fine & dandy

[all your mwbassguy a]

but will it still suck compared to a powerpc?

Re:thats all fine & dandy

[intermodal]

of course it will. Intel still seems to think that consumers care about new 32-bit chips or x86 architectures. If I were in charge of the same teams who created Itanium and Itanium II, I'd be afraid of making an attempt to be better than PowerPC too. It's stuff like this that make it even more obvious why VIA doesn't care that they can only make C3s pin-compatible with Intel chips for another 3 years. 3 years from now, intel's sockets will be irrelevant unless Intel stops sucking at introducing new features that users give a shit about.

Re:thats all fine & dandy

[NWRefund]

Just because they say, "You can get a 40 to 50 percent increase in clock speed with no further improvements," doesn't mean they aren't going to implement further improvements anyway.

Does it say in that article that the new processor will be 32 bit x-86? No. It doesn't give any specifics at all, as a matter of fact.

Intel has a very talented marketing department. Whether or not you like them as a company, you at LEAST have to admit that. This is exactly as someone else has mentioned - it is a slap in the face to AMD who, try though they might, are still drowning in red ink.

Don't berate this new manufacturing process until you have a little more info on what they're going to make with it, hm?

Re:thats all fine & dandy

[intermodal]

all i'm saying is that Intel hasn't shown a recent history of engineering exellence. they've made a few advances, but nothing strikingly wonderful for the average user. They've consistently over the years shown more of an interest in high-end stuff that doesn't benefit average user. Itanium series, for example, is not something I expect to ever become a desktop processor, while I could see Opterons potentially making their way onto some desktops. Especially if *nixes become a more popular way to go, Intel is going to need a burly consumer chip to remain competitive.

Re:thats all fine & dandy

[ProtonMotiveForce]

So let me understand what you're saying, in words I can understand. I'll paraphrase, correct me if I'm wrong:

"I'm a stupid asshole."

Did I get it right?

See, 'new 32-bit chips' are what's selling the most, by far right now. Secondly, nobody needs a 64-bit x86 compatible processor. It's a stupid idea that you filthy nerds are buying into because you're being told to. How many of you even have 2G of memory, much less 4G? Why would you need x86 compatibility when you'll need to recompile everything to see any benefit anyway, and if you're doing that you can get a Madison/PPC/UltraSparc/PA-RISC machine thats 64-bits?

Lastly, rocket surgeon, the newest Itanium processors smoke the shit out of the PPC in their intended usage models - what the hell kind of stupid are you selling, cause I ain't buyin'.

Re:thats all fine & dandy

[intermodal]

wow, congratulations on being a fucking idiot. Perhaps you're ignoring the fact that not everyone lives in your happy little Windows-based corporate world, where an "intended use" itanium box that sucks faster than a decent PPC processor while costing exponentially more. Maybe some of us would like to see prices on new technologies come down before we die off due to old age. And how will this happen? you guessed it, mass production! How do we get mass production? by creating a demand that makes the chips we want to have become predominant in the industry! let's hear it for supply and demand. Fuck you.

65 nanometers?

[Anonymous Coward]

THAT'S ABOUT THE SIZE OF CMDRTACO'S COCK. AND I SHOULD KNOW.

- Hemos

Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account. Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to Cowb Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account. Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to Cowb Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account. Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to Cowb Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account. Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to Cowb Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.

Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account. Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to Cowb

Intel culture

[BiggerIsBetter]

What a beautifully telling Intel quote that is, "You can get a 40 to 50 percent increase in clock speed with no further improvements". Just keep ramping it up boys.

Re:Intel culture

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame bush. No wait. This isnt a horrible thing. Or is it. Well if it is bad, i blame bush. If not, this is great in SPITE of bush. There we go. Thus concludes a typcial /. post.

Re:Intel culture

[Anonymous Coward]

No wait. I love bush. No wait. You are an idiot. No wait. Why do you want me to wait? No wait. no wait. no wait.. . no waiting. No WAIT.

Re:Intel culture

[Anonymous Coward]

True, they should be focussing on making their chips slower, not faster. Silly Intel!

I work in the Semi industry, and Intel is by far the leader in fab technology. It's hysterical to hear someone imply that they aren't going to improve anything.

Re:Intel culture

[Anonymous Coward]

But according to that quote... they aren't improving anything... they're just upping the clock speed... i.e. just upping the marketing engine.

Re:Intel culture

[shaitand]

clock speed doesn't equal processor speed. It just means they'll have a yet higher number to tote to the idiots who think it does.

Re:Intel culture

[Anonymous Coward]

You misread it: he said they get that improvement just from shrinking the process alone, and doing nothing else. RTFA - right after the quote you just lifted from the summary :

More transistors can be inserted into chips as well, which also boosts performance. Moore's Law dictates that the number of transistors doubles on a given chip with biennial manufacturing advances. While chipmakers often don't automatically double transistor count, they do increase it substantially so that new features can be added to the silicon.

Re:Intel culture

[Anonymous Coward]

But all else being equal, clock speed does indeed equal processor speed. The same design in 65 nm can be clocked faster, and thus run faster, than that design in 90 nm.

Re:Intel culture

[timeOday]

clock speed doesn't equal processor speed.

Uh, yes it does, if you're talking about running the *same* chip design at 40% higher clock (as in this case). It's not like shrinking chip somehow makes it use more cycles per instruction.

Sure, the overall system performance won't improve by 40% without 40% faster RAM, HDD, etc... but you did say "processor speed."

The "Megahertz Myth" is itself becoming a myth, as people use it to dismiss huge differences in clock speed. None of the mainstream architectures differ by all THAT much (as much as say, a factor of 2) in cycles per instruction, except maybe for vector processors on certain very specific tasks.

Re:Intel culture

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic?

I see we must have a PPC zealot with a few mod points to burn. I guess all that money losing unused capability out at Fishkill that they couldn't even rent out makes you a little jealous of Chipzilla making huge improvements that you can only dream of, huh?

Chump.

Re:Intel culture

[shaitand]

All else being equal yes, but all else is not equal.

In the smaller design the processor is less stable and generates more heat, the error has to be compensated for and this significantly reduces the impact of the clock speed increase, possibly to the point of little to nil or even negative impact.

Not to mention, this is vaporware.

yes

[SweetAndSourJesus]

but it wil suck much faster.

Bohr?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bohr? I wonder if he really knows where the manufacturing plans are or where they're going.

Reduce Power?

[brandido]

According to the article,

Reducing the size of the chip improves performance, reduces costs and can potentially cut energy consumption. In a nutshell, electrons have a shorter commute in 65-nanometer chips, so performance goes up. The gate length--the distance electrons travel to get from the source to the drain on a transistor and thereby flip the transistor on--drops from 50 nanometers to 35 nanometers in 65-nanometer chips.

However, it was my understanding that power consumption will often go up with smaller geometries as leakage current increases with the smaller gaters. Can anyone elaborate on this?

Re:Reduce Power?

[chiph]

I was going to ask what about heat dissipation? When devices get smaller you have a smaller area to shed heat. This issue (which is pretty serious - ask any Athlon owner) wasn't covered in the article.

Chip H.

Re:Reduce Power?

[John Courtland]

There's all sorts of problems when you get that small and fast. EMF interference, gate jumping, electron migration. The thing basically is a small radio transmitter, and starts causing itself problems just by running so fast. They need to really start designing more intelligently, unlike (as a previous poster stated) "ramping it up".

Re:Reduce Power?

[addaon]

The relative importance of leakage increases at smaller geometries, but for all geometries on the near horizon, the increase isn't enough to outweigh the decrease in 'normal' (switching) power usage. This will probably change around 40 nm, but at 65 nm we're still making serious improvements.

Re:Reduce Power?

[John Courtland]

It's not that they produce a smaller die, they just jam more transistors on to it. Heat dissipation will be the same, heatsinks and fans (or water, or peltier, liquid nitrogen, etc...)

Re:Reduce Power?

[DJStealth]

I think its the opposite.. since electrons have less distance to travel, they are less likely to 'leak' and thereby have a lower power consumption and generate less heat.

Re:Reduce Power?

[batura]

While leakage is a big problem, its not as big as the power usage per switching transisitor, which if P = C * F * Vdd^2. This is the power consumption when the transistor goes from its high to low state and reducing the distance between gates reduces the capacitance in the wire. At really high frequency, you can make any wire seem like a capacitor, so its important to reduce the lenght of wire you're using.

Re:Reduce Power?

[mlyle]

Nah, it's actually the opposite of that.

Since electrons have less distance to travel, the resistance of the dielectric is less and less will leak. In extreme cases, for very small geometries, quantum tunnelling becomes an issue as electrons disappear on one side of the gate and appear on the other.

But as other posters said, leakage is currently still fairly insignificant compared to the huge WOOOSH of power that goes into the chip when things switch. Although leakage is becoming now more important for devices that sleep and stop their oscillator to reduce power-- passive power consumption, for the same process, is directly proportional to feature size, die size, and the square of the operating voltage.

Re:Reduce Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking idiot, power consumption always equals heat dissipation

Re:Reduce Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

EMF Interferance? You're unbelievable!

Re:Reduce Power?

[MikeCapone]

However, it was my understanding that power consumption will often go up with smaller geometries [...]

Not only that, but heat dissipation can become a problem too since you have as much, or more, heat to dissipate from a smaller surface area.

Re:Reduce Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

People said the same thing when clock speeds were in the 100's of Mhz - never happened.

BTW. its electromigration and EMI.

Re:Reduce Power?

[rsmith-mac]

At this point, without some sort of additional chip technology(SOI, tri-gates, etc), it seems very likely that power consumption will definately stay even, if not go up entirely. Every new scale of technology is a bigger problem to make work, as the (known) laws of physics aren't moving with it, posing a very absolute barrier. Whereas 350nm, 250nm, and even 180nm went off without a hitch(with companies even manging to stick some Cu in there), 130nm was a big problem for AMD and TSMC(makers of Nvidia's GPU's prior to the IBM), and even Intel was having problems depending on who you ask.

Currently, 90nm is looking especially difficult, as Intel has had to push P4's based on the technology back twice from when they originally intended to release them, putting us currently at Q1 2004. That introduction isn't looking very pretty either, with the Prescott being dubbed the "100wt monster"; a new cooler design is nessisary in most cases for Prescott CPU's, along with the new BTX case standard(repositions the CPU for better cooling) for later on in the 90nm cycle, and all of this is for a chip that runs hotter than its 130nm counterpart(Prescott only adds another 512KB of L2 cache and SSE3, along with general core fixes; this shouldn't have resulted in a net gain against the overall power use unless the shrink didn't drop consumption significantly).

Either way, Intel is going to be able to pull off 65nm, but without the aid of other technologies, all they're going to end up with is a very hot chip that will have little chance at a major clockspeed ramp-up in its lifetime.

Re:Reduce Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure Intel knows more about producing chips intelligently than some slashdot clown.

So, in other words, shut the fuck up and submit you poser.

Re:Reduce Power?

[Hoser McMoose]

There are a number of things going on here, but a few important things to think of.

First off, with previous shrinking of the manufacturing process you could run the processor at a lower voltage. Most 500nm chips ran at 3.3V, 350nm chips ran at 2.8V, 250nm chips ran at 2.0V, 180nm chips ran at 1.75V and 130nm chips now run mostly at 1.55V. As you can see pretty quickly though, the difference in voltage isn't as much as it used to be, and with 90nm production, that difference is pretty much zero, most 90nm chips will probably run at about the same 1.55V of current (130nm) chips.

Second, the Prescott does add a bit more than just cache. Alongside the new SSE3 instructions, Intel is also making some fairly major changes to the P4 core, fixing some of the potential problem areas. I haven't heard 100% official confirmation, but apparently it adds a barrel shifter (should be very noticeable for D.net clients if they do) and fixes some of the scheduling issues with multiplications. These changes are going to result in extra transistors, and extra transistors means more power.

Also, the Prescott is supposed to improve hyperthreading. This is a good thing from a performance standpoint, it means that you'll get more of a performance boost from running two threads at once. The downside is that it means that the processor pipeline will be packed more fully, again increasing power consumption.

In short, there's lots to consider, no easy equation to get you the power consumption of the new chip.

Re:Reduce Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blow me long and blow me hard.

Re:Reduce Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

EMI = EMF Interference. And I'm sorry I said electromigration incorrectly.

Re:Reduce Power?

[chiph]

You fucking idiot, power consumption always equals heat dissipation

Not so in the real world.

If you pump 25 watts of power into the chip, you need a way to extract 25 watts (or more) of heat from it in order to prevent a chip-sized Chernobyl. This is done via physical contact with a device to carry the heat away (heatsink, heatsink + fan, Peltier device, etc, etc.). The smaller the contact area, the smaller amount of heat that can be transferred (until we get a substance which is a perfect thermal conductor) across the mechanical junction.

However, like the other person who replied said, the die size will be staying the same in these new chips, so surface-slash-contact area will remain the same, thus potential heat transfer should stay the same.

Chip H.

Re:Reduce Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heat spreaders my friend, heat spreaders :)

tsarkon reports 9 step greased up yoda v3.5

[Anonymous Coward]

9 steps to greasing your anus for Yoda Doll Insertion!
v 3.50.0 $YodaBSD: src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/yodanotes/9.step.p rocess.sgml,v 3.50.0 2003/11/24 18:33:34 tsarkon Exp $

1. Defecate. Preferably after eating senna, ex lax, prunes, cabbage, pickled eggs, and Vietnamese chili garlic sauce.
2. Wipe ass with witch hazel, soothes horrific burns. (Taco can use Hazel on mouth to soothe the horrific burns from chowing on ass so much).
3. Prime anus with anal ease. (Now Cherry Flavored for those butthole lickers amongst you - oh, that is most of /.)
4. Slather richly a considerable amount of Vaseline or other anal lubricants into your rectum at least until the bend and also take your Yoda Doll or ">Yoda soap on a rope and liberally apply it.
5. Pucker your balloon knot several times actuating the sphincter muscle in order to work it in.
6. Put a nigger do-rag on Yoda's head so the ears don't stick out like daggers!
7. Make sure to have a mechanism by which to fish yoda out of your rectum, the soap on the rope is especially useful because that is built in.
8. Slowly rest yourself onto your yoda figurine.
9. Gyrate gleefully in your computer chair while your fat sexless geek nerd loser fat shit self enjoys the prostate massage you'll be getting. Think about snoodling with the Sarlaac pit. Read Slashdot. Masturbate to anime. Email one of the editors hoping they will honor you with a reply. Join several more dating services - this time, you dont check the (desired - speaks english) and (desired - literate). You figure you might get a chance then. Order some fucking crap from Think Geek. Get Linux to boot on a Black And Decker Appliance. Wish you could afford a new computer. Argue that IDE is better than SCSI because you cant afford SCSI. Make claims about how Linux rules. Compile a kernel on your 486SX. Claim to hate windows but use it for Everquest. Admire Ghyslain's courage in making that wonderful star wars movie. Officially convert to the Jedi religion. Talk about how cool Mega Tokyo is. Try and make sure you do your regular 50 story submissions to Slashdot, all of which get rejected because people who arent fatter than CowboyNeal can't submit. Fondle shrimpy penis while making a yoda voice and saying, feel the force, padawan, feeel the foooorce, hurgm. Yes. Yes. When 900 years you reach, a dick half as big you will not have.

All in a days work with a yoda figurine rammed up your ass.

I HAVE A GREASED UP YODA DOLL SHOVED UP MY ASS!

y______________________________YODA_ANUS
o_________________.'_:__`.________________y
d____________.-.'`.__;___.'`.-.___________o
a___________/_:____\_;__/____;_\__________d
s_,'__""--.:__;".-.";:_:".-.":__;.--""__`,a
e_:'_`.t""--.._'/@.`;___',@\`_..--""j.'_`;s
x______`:-.._J_'-.-'L___`--_'_L_..-;'_____e
________"-.___;__.-"__"-.__:___.-"________x
y____________L_'_/.------.\_'_J___________y
o_____________"-.___"--"___.-"____________o
d______________.l"-:_TR_;-";._____________d
a_________.-j/'.;__;""""__/_.'\"-.________a
s_______v.'_/:`._"-.:_____.-"_.';__`.v____s
e____.-"__/_;__"-._"-..-"_.-"__:____"-.___e
x_.+"-.__:_:______"-.__.-"______;-.____\__x
_v;_\__`.;_; I Yoda Have A _____:_:_"+._;_
y_:__;___;_;_Greased Up ME In __:_;__:_\:_y
o_;__:___;_:_MY ASS! This Goes__;:___;__:_o
d:_\__;__:__; On FOREVER!______:_;__/__::_d

Because of Yoda's attitude, I usually d

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news...
The sun will actually rise again tomorrow!
Status Quo not to change!
Technology takes miniscule step forward!

Is this really Slashdot material?

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot:
AC bitches about slashdot story

Re:In other news...

[tarquin_fim_bim]

Status Quo not to change!

I bloody well hope not, I've forked out 35 to see them next week.

Moore's Law

[worst_name_ever]

In keeping with Moore's Law

Well, more like "keeping Moore's Law a self-fulfilling prediction for yet another generation of processors". ;)

Hey SweetAndSourJesus

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off, tosser. Go smoke a pole.

Currencies related to EURO

[Anonymous Coward]

HONEY GET YOU BOPPIN' SHOES! The airplane is waiting... what're you waiting for! Exchange some euros to pounds and get over here!

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This is great news

[Timesprout]

The gate length--the distance electrons travel to get from the source to the drain on a transistor and thereby flip the transistor on--drops from 50 nanometers to 35 nanometers in 65-nanometer chips.

For all those lazy or out of condition electrons out there, they only have to travel 35 nanometers now to get some work done.

Re:This is great news

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only 177305x times an electron's length. In comparision to the average human, that's about 88km (~55mi) going in billionths of a second. Come on humans! We must win this race!

Re:This is great news

[overbom]

I believe they prefer to be called free radicals.

I have no doubt they can do it.....

[Selecter]

But it seems to me to be rather premature announcement, supposing these chips will be out when Intel says they will be. I think Intel is starting to feel the heat from quarters they didnt expect, like AMD and Apple via the good graces of IBM. Athlon 64 looks like a winner and so does the IBM made G5. IBM and AMD both have great looking roadmaps for the future.

This smells like a another smear piece by Intel to me, kinda like paper launching the P4 Emergency Edition on AMD's rollout day for the Athlon 64.

Boo. Hiss.

Re:I have no doubt they can do it.....

[Timesprout]

Why is it premature? They announced they had managed to get the 65 nanaometer process working and intend to put it into full scale production in a couple of years. Perfectly normal behaviour and the timescales seem rational. I'm sure Intel shareholders and the IT commuuity in general like to be kept up to date with what Intel is working on.

What do you expect them to do, develop the process and then srrap it ? , or maybe keep stum for a couple of years and then suddenly start rolling 65 nm chips out the door as a big surprise?

Re:I have no doubt they can do it.....

[Selecter]

I thinks it's premature to build a few test SDRAM cells and then magically announce they are going to build chips using that tech in possibly less than 1 year and 1 month. It's far more likely they will not meet that target, given the real hurdles of fully implementing that process to overcome. A few SDRAM cells does not a P5(6?) make.

Also, someone is not telling the truth.

"The 65-nanometer chips will not include the IBM-touted silicon-on-insulator technology, either. "We have not seen any significant performance advantages with SOI," Bohr said."

Well, who is it? IBM and AMD are going with it. Who's wrong, Intel or IBM/AMD? I'd like to know.

Re:I have no doubt they can do it.....

[dreamchaser]

I might not be a matter of who is right or who is wrong. Things aren't always that black and white. Sometimes different approaches can yield comparable results.

Of course, it's fashionable to bash Intel around here. If it were AMD announcing this, the fanboys would be lining up for their fr1st pr0st proclaiming it the Second Coming ;)

Re:I have no doubt they can do it.....

[Erich]

SOI has a much different design methodology. If you are Intel and have a really great design flow for non-SOI, it may not be as simple as "just go to SOI."

Also, for complete systems, SOI has a problem in that memory density tends to be much lower... so your caches have to be smaller if they are on-chip.

Re:I have no doubt they can do it.....

[dustinmarc]

I think Intel is starting to feel the heat from quarters they didnt expect, like AMD and Apple via the good graces of IBM.

This argument is totally untrue. Intel has done better than expected the past two quarters and is expecting to have their best quarter ever for Q4 and is expecting to do well far into the future as well. This doesn't sound to me like a company that is too worried.

Since February both Intel's stock has increased by about 18 points and AMD's by 12.

Re:I have no doubt they can do it.....

[Bored Huge Krill]

"a few SDRAM cells"? 4 million is more than a few. And they're SRAM cells, not SDRAM. Kind of stuff you need for cache. It does give a pretty good indication of how well along the process is.

BTW, this is apparently being done at the fab known as D1D in Hillsboro - this isn't a small scale research lab, it's a full size production fab. That it is being done there indicates it isn't as far away as you might think.

As for your comment about SOI, why does it need to be so black and white? It's always a judgement about the benefit versus cost, and it's always possible to get the same result more than one way. IBM made a strategic decision to go down the SOI path some time ago. Intel has gone down the strained silicon path. Each has its advantages and costs, and either camp could switch to the other if they saw an advantage in doing so. But given that they have made different choices, it's unlikely that one is "wrong" and the other is "right"

Re:I have no doubt they can do it.....

[Bored Huge Krill]

yes, I'm well aware of that (I am a silicon engineer myself, btw).

However, it's also reasonable to expect that, at least in terms of circuit design, 65nm of any flavor is going to be much different that 90nm circuit design of any flavor. And certainly both will look nothing like .35u or .25u. When I was at college, 3u was considered leading edge, and circuit design today is barely recognizable from then.

Re:I have no doubt they can do it.....

[bigbadwlf]

This smells like a another smear piece by Intel to me

...and you smell like a troll.
Intel has announced they've made an advancement in technology and all you can do is bash them. Someone had to break the .65nm "barrier" and you're such a fanboy that you can't stand that it was Intel. Grow up.
I'm quite sure the Opteron will eventually benefit from a die shrink as well.

Who modded this idiot up? Shame on you.

Re:I have no doubt they can do it.....

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent up....

Nigger it up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:Nigger it up!

[amokk]

As opposed to chinking (!) it up?

40 to 50 percent increase?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can get a 40 to 50 percent increase in clock speed with no further improvements" says Intel director Mark Bohr."

Yeah, I get those "40 to 50 percent increase" emails all the time...I've been deleting them as fast as they come in.

Ohhhhhh...wait.... He said CLOCK, not COCK
nevermind :-)
TDz.

Re:40 to 50 percent increase?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ohhhhhh...wait.... He said CLOCK"

Just this part standing alone would have made it funnier. Contrary to what your emails may be telling you, sometimes less is more.

Re:40 to 50 percent increase?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I get those "40 to 50 percent increase" emails all the time...I've been deleting them as fast as they come in.

I keep trying to tell ya! It really works!

bugfix.

[Anonymous Coward]

9 steps to greasing your anus for Yoda Doll Insertion!
v 3.50.0 $YodaBSD: src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/yodanotes/9.step.p rocess.sgml,v 3.50.0 2003/11/24 18:33:34 tsarkon Exp $

1. Defecate. Preferably after eating senna, ex lax, prunes, cabbage, pickled eggs, and Vietnamese chili garlic sauce.
2. Wipe ass with witch hazel, soothes horrific burns. (Taco can use Hazel on mouth to soothe the horrific burns from chowing on ass so much).
3. Prime anus with anal ease. (Now Cherry Flavored for those butthole lickers amongst you - oh, that is most of /.)
4. Slather richly a considerable amount of Vaseline or other anal lubricants into your rectum at least until the bend and also take your Yoda Doll or Yoda soap on a rope and liberally apply it.
5. Pucker your balloon knot several times actuating the sphincter muscle in order to work it in.
6. Put a nigger do-rag on Yoda's head so the ears don't stick out like daggers!
7. Make sure to have a mechanism by which to fish yoda out of your rectum, the soap on the rope is especially useful because that is built in.
8. Slowly rest yourself onto your yoda figurine.
9. Gyrate gleefully in your computer chair while your fat sexless geek nerd loser fat shit self enjoys the prostate massage you'll be getting. Think about snoodling with the Sarlaac pit. Read Slashdot. Masturbate to anime. Email one of the editors hoping they will honor you with a reply. Join several more dating services - this time, you dont check the (desired - speaks english) and (desired - literate). You figure you might get a chance then. Order some fucking crap from Think Geek. Get Linux to boot on a Black And Decker Appliance. Wish you could afford a new computer. Argue that IDE is better than SCSI because you cant afford SCSI. Make claims about how Linux rules. Compile a kernel on your 486SX. Claim to hate windows but use it for Everquest. Admire Ghyslain's courage in making that wonderful star wars movie. Officially convert to the Jedi religion. Talk about how cool Mega Tokyo is. Try and make sure you do your regular 50 story submissions to Slashdot, all of which get rejected because people who arent fatter than CowboyNeal can't submit. Fondle shrimpy penis while making a yoda voice and saying, feel the force, padawan, feeel the foooorce, hurgm. Yes. Yes. When 900 years you reach, a dick half as big you will not have.

All in a days work with a yoda figurine rammed up your ass.

I HAVE A GREASED UP YODA DOLL SHOVED UP MY ASS!

y______________________________YODA_ANUS
o_________________.'_:__`.________________y
d____________.-.'`.__;___.'`.-.___________o
a___________/_:____\_;__/____;_\__________d
s_,'__""--.:__;".-.";:_:".-.":__;.--""__`,a
e_:'_`.t""--.._'/@.`;___',@\`_..--""j.'_`;s
x______`:-.._J_'-.-'L___`--_'_L_..-;'_____e
________"-.___;__.-"__"-.__:___.-"________x
y____________L_'_/.------.\_'_J___________y
o_____________"-.___"--"___.-"____________o
d______________.l"-:_TR_;-";._____________d
a_________.-j/'.;__;""""__/_.'\"-.________a
s_______v.'_/:`._"-.:_____.-"_.';__`.v____s
e____.-"__/_;__"-._"-..-"_.-"__:____"-.___e
x_.+"-.__:_:______"-.__.-"______;-.____\__x
_v;_\__`.;_; I Yoda Have A _____:_:_"+._;_
y_:__;___;_;_Greased Up ME In __:_;__:_\:_y
o_;__:___;_:_MY ASS! This Goes__;:___;__:_o
d:_\__;__:__; On FOREVER!______:_;__/__

Terrific

[ActionPlant]

So does this mean, with 60nm tech, the die can be four times as large with an increase of 500% power? If we're moving from 90nm to 60nm, in the same die size that effectively puts us at a 30% efficiency increase. Times four (heck, just add more layers if you need more circuits!)...well, I'm hoping this means we see 20Ghz chips in time for Longhorn's launch. Watch it crash in 1/5 of the time!!

Damon,

Ouch!

[Space cowboy]

That was a gauntlet to the face and no mistake. AMD have just announced a new Fab in Dresden, remember, at 90nm....

Simon.

Re:Ouch!

[WinterSolstice]

So?

The plant in Dresden will actually work, producing actual chips. This bit from Intel is just vapor at this point.

Besides, Intel will have to re-tool, debug, and market anyway. It's not like AMD will be any different.

-WS

Re:Ouch!

[dustinmarc]

I'd hate to burst your bubble, but Intel happens to already be manufacturing the chips successfully.

Re:Ouch!

[WinterSolstice]

Don't think so. 2005?

Right now, they probably have at best development versions that are extremely expensive and seriously low yield. They have a long way to go before it will work well enough to make money. I'm sure AMD will be along about 6 mos after Intel (if the chips sell well) and then by late 2005 there will be a new IBM PowerPC chip anyhow.

-WS

Re:Ouch!

[dustinmarc]

I guess the choice of manufacturing is a bad word. Intel has said however that they have successfully made fully funtctioning chips in their development fab.

Intel in the past just turns their development fab into a manufacturing fab once it's time to start manufacturing the chip and there is no reason to beleive that it will be any different this time.

Re:Ouch!

[Bored Huge Krill]

remember what "development fab" means here. This is the development fab designated "D1D". It's at Ronler Acres in Hillsboro, OR. This is not just some lab, guys. It's a full scale $2B fab. The same size that AMD just broke ground on in Dresden for their fab. Only Intel's is already running.

Incidentally, the previous development fab (D1C) which was the development fab for the 90nm process and is on the same site right next to D1D, is now a full production fab. I believe it's making Prescott and Dothan parts in preparation for next quarter's launch

Re:Ouch!

[Hoser McMoose]

Err, no. AMD just announced a new fab in Dresden that will produce chips at a 65nm fab process, just as they have been saying all along.

Of course, AMD's fab won't be ready until 2006, so Intel will have a lead, but that's nothing new. Intel is pretty much always 6 months ahead of AMD (and everyone else for that matter) at bringing out a new manufacturing process. Being the biggest semiconductor manufacturer with the largest budget and most buying power has it's advantages you know.

Re:Ouch!

[WinterSolstice]

Well, there ya go then. I stand corrected.

-WS

Sure, you can cram more circuits on a chip...

[Not_Wiggins]

But, you'll also be incuring greated magnetic field interference. Heck, the thing will also generate more heat as driving current through smaller traces creates more "friction;" the chip might break itself simply under thermal load.

Just because you can make it smaller, doesn't mean it'll function properly. There's a theoretical limit to how small traces can go before the interference makes signaling impossible.

I can't wait to see how many processors get "down-binned" once they ramp up production with this tech. 8/

Re:Sure, you can cram more circuits on a chip...

[Anonymous Coward]

How does complete bullshit like this get modded up? This guy has no idea what he's talking about. Pathetic.

It's too bad this guy doesn't work at Intel. I'm sure none of their engineers thought of these points.

Re:Sure, you can cram more circuits on a chip...

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't their engineers that post this crap, it is their marketing people, MORON.

Ahhhh. now only if Intel had more DEC designs to steal, they might have a chance at making a working chip.

Go buy a P4 that works _slower_ (clock-for-clock) than a P3 and thank them for serving it to you up the fanny! Oh, did I mention you're a MORON?

Re:Sure, you can cram more circuits on a chip...

[Anonymous Coward]

you must love making up words. go read a book

Re:Sure, you can cram more circuits on a chip...

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel's marketing people are posting on slashdot? The poster was clearly just making stuff up, trying to sound smart to get modded up.

I'm not sure what the anti-Intel rant was for, either. I'm not endorsing or condemning Intel. Just pointing out that the original poster didn't know what he was talking about. I guess that concept was a little to subtle for you.

Re:Sure, you can cram more circuits on a chip...

[Cyno]

Pretend you're an electron in a Hydrogen atom. Now imagine how large the proton is, that you orbit all day. Its so huge you could probably live on its surface, along with 1000 other electrons, in your own electron village. But Protons don't like that so they push all you lazy dirty electrons away and make you get a job.

Anyway, to make a long story short, electrons push eachother around in a wire, so things like AC work. And they're really tiny, so the wires can be made really really small. In fact, most atoms are smaller than 1 nm. And an electron is the smallest part of an atom.

So it should be theoretically possible to build a CPU down to 1nm and still be able to function as long as we have the right insulation/technology to control things at that size. I would hope we would be using self-replicating nanorobots built out of atoms by then.

Re:Sure, you can cram more circuits on a chip...

[HiThere]

You've just got to make the wires really straight so the electrons can go ballistic...

O, we aren't that small yet? Well, give them time. :-)

. . should have been 64 nanometers

[Anonymous Coward]

If they were really thinking ahead, they should have tried for 64 nanometers. Then, when the chip size halves every few years according to Moore's law, it can stay a whole number of nanometers for a few more years yet.

Moore's "Law"?

[nacturation]

I've always wondered why it's called Moore's Law. After all, it's not something which is mathematically provable. You'd figure computer scientists and systems engineers would be a bit more rigorous and call it Moore's Theorem, Moore's Axiom, or Moore's Postulate (I'm not sure what the best terminology is for this kind of conjecture). Granted, it has been approximately held, but there's no underlying reason why processor speed couldn't increase by an order of magnitude in a few months given the right implementation.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[taradfong]

Similarly, "Murphy's Law" was supposed to be called "Murphy's Axiom" but something got screwed up.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[Not_Wiggins]

I'd be more comfortable with them calling it "Moore's Observation."

Or, to put it more directly, "Moore's Observation of a Small Sample of the Overall Computing Power Increase In A Specific Timeframe... Limited Application!" 8)

Maybe then it can go away... as it should.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's named after a guy named Gerry Moore who worked at TI or HP IIRC. He noticed that roughly every 18 months, things doubled in capacity/speed/complexity. His insight was quickly adopted by the industry as "Moore's Law" though there is nothing about it that mandates anyone need follow it. Quite the contrary. But, since people have a preconceived notion that things will get faster/bigger at this pace, it kind of leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[shaitand]

I'm fairly sure they've been using moore's law as an excuse to delay the release of technologies long since working the lab for quite awhile now. Do you really think intel fly's by the seat of their pants praying AMD won't discover technology that boosts chip speeds to 200 or 300ghz? Yeah right, both sides are already WAY beyond what's being released, they are only ramping up what they have to. They compete at the high end sure, but it's in terms of how long they can make their predeveloped technology last... NOT on the how well they can actually produce the current generation of processor.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[shaitand]

True without moore's law in place technology might be released much faster. Since moores law is there they only have to double, instead of jumping from 3ghz to 300ghz even though they already have 300ghz technology.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[Anonymous Coward]

In math/science/engineering jargon, the word "law" can also mean a mathematical formula that describes the behavior of some system. Think Boyle's / Charles' / Universal Gas "Law", or Kepler's Laws for the movement of planets.

Note that "laws" in this sense can be inaccurate, incomplete, or incorrect.

Since there is a formula in this case, the term "law" is appropriate.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[Hobbex]

Certainly not Theorem - the definition of a theorem is that it can be proven to be true. And not Axiom either - an axiom is typically a statement that provides the base for a mathematical system (like "There exists and empty set"). Postulate is, AFAIK, just a synonym for axiom.

One could call it "Moore's conjecture", "Moore's oberservation", or "Moore's prediction" if one wants to be strict. The use of the term Law is not completely wrong however, there are other examples of the term being used for things that are just heuristically observed, like Zipf's Law for instance.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[painandgreed]

As far as scientific usage is concerned, there is no difference between a theory and a law. Theorys do not become laws. Laws do not get demoted when proven wrong ( e.g. Newton's Universal Law of Gravity with the coming of realativity). Both require that it be supported by results and generally accepted by science. The best explanation at any attempt to differentiate them is that Laws explain how things work while theories explain why things work.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[conan776]

I always get it confused with Cole's Law. Which is odd considering Cole's Law is just thinly sliced cabbage.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[nacturation]

In math/science/engineering jargon, the word "law" can also mean a mathematical formula that describes the behavior of some system. Think Boyle's / Charles' / Universal Gas "Law", or Kepler's Laws for the movement of planets.

Note that "laws" in this sense can be inaccurate, incomplete, or incorrect.

Please provide examples where these laws are incorrect. Granted, they might be incomplete in the sense that they are simplistic and only take into consideration a subset of the system. But, for that subset, the laws always hold.

Since there is a formula in this case, the term "law" is appropriate.

No, because the formula hasn't been shown to be generally true. I can say that an article on slashdot will generally have a 1:2 troll ratio (or whatever it is). And if you scan through the myriad articles, you could see that this ratio has generally held. However, it's not a law because there might be some innovation in the future, such as a policy change, authentication, whatever... which totally eliminates trolling, or changes the troll ratio significantly. Just because I stick a formula there, that doesn't make it any more a law.

There's a difference between the liberal arts version of what a law is and the scientific/mathematical version of what a law is.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[Cyno]

If any corporation in a capitalist system discovers a way to make a CPU run at Y Ghz, it would do its best to slowly increase clock rate from the current speed CPUs at X Ghz up to Y so it can maximize profits.

There is no incentive to rush unless you have competition. And we're talking top of the line CPUs here. Competition would need several billion dollars and some really smart people to even dream of competing.

Just look at the Alpha. Where would be today if we could have prevented DEC from being bought out? More advanced than we are. But where could we be today if all these CPU manufacturers shared ideas and worked together to build the best CPUs they are capable of? 60nm!

Where will we be tomorrow when we decide we don't need more computing power and its no longer profitable to make CPUs?

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It fits the exact definitino of a law.

Law: A generalization based on consistent experience or results: the law of supply and demand.

Always remember that most words have more than one definition. In mathematics, there's different definition.

Law: A general principle or rule that is assumed or that has been proven to hold between expressions.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[Oscar_Wilde]

Yes, but as you well know anything that can go wrong woll.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proveable? HAhahahahaha .... Eat code, byteboyz. Demonstrable 'rules' dominate you, but truth extends far beyond prove-ability. See Newton & Schrodinger for examples. Otherwise RTFK --- see Godel for details ......

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[nathanh]

I've always wondered why it's called Moore's Law.

Because it rhymes.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please provide examples where these laws are incorrect

The particular examples I cited need not be incorrect, though they certainly will be when you change the environment. Consider also Zipf's Law, Hubble's Law, or Newton's Second Law of Motion, none of which are universally true, absolutely precise, or always applicable.

Granted, they might be incomplete

You could say the same thing about Moore's Law, if you weren't just being argumentative.

because the formula hasn't been shown to be generally true

Of course it has. It was derived from and describes historical data, and has been a reasonable match for future data not available when it was first cast. Take another look at Zipf's Law.

it's not a law because there might be some innovation in the future

And Boyle's Law might not hold because the temperature might change. That's just "incompleteness" again.

Nobody, least of all Moore, has claimed that it's some sort of required principle of the construction of actual universes that any form of computation doubles every X time units. Feel free to demolish all the strawmen you like by posing that as the definition for Moore's Law and then striking it down.

The OP is still incorrect when he carps about the noun chosen. Here's the relevant definition from Merriam-Webster:

"a general relation proved or assumed to hold between mathematical or logical expressions"

And dictionary.com:

"A general principle or rule that is assumed or that has been proven to hold between expressions"

The word "law" has a lot of meanings, with shades of distinction subtle and otherwise. Broaden your vocabulary.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[SEE]

Well, what's a Law?

Newton's Laws of Motion are only true within measurement errors at low speeds and relatively low masses.

Boyle's Law only applies to a nonexistent ideal gas; it does not apply to any gas in actual existence. Ohm's Law requires an ideal conductor.

Bode's Law breaks down at Neptune (if you count Ceres, the largest asteroid, as a planet), and only works approximately. Zipf's Law holds true in vast numbers of things (commonality of words, city sizes, web traffic . . .), but there doesn't seem to be anything in the physical realm or mathematics that would require things comply with it. Moore's Law seems to be approximately in this category of things.

Godwin's Law, Sturgeon's Law, and Murphy's Law are observations that are seen as being more-or-less true, but aren't even as rigorous as the above three.

Sure, you can argue that the latter six laws shuldn't be called Laws, but then you're going to run into the Hacker Law -- "Complaints about a word being used improperly will be ignored." See efforts to end the use of "hacker" for script kiddies.

Re:Moore's "Law"?

[Hoser McMoose]

His name was Gordon Moore, and he worked for Intel... err, more to the point, he founded Intel along with Andy Grove and Robert Noyce. Of course, like pretty much all the important players in the semiconductor industry, he was working at Fairchild at the time that he released his paper. What he said was:

"The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year"

He predicted that this would hold true for 10 years, from 1965 to 1975. Of course, this prediction fairly quickly changed to doubling the transistor count every 18 months, since the 12 month prediction didn't hold true for very long. Now we're doubling transistor count roughly every 24 months.

FWIW anyone who's interested can take a quick read of Moore's whitepaper where this "law" came from.

Is that enough?

[nnnneedles]

50%, hmm.

doesn't Moore's law require 100% increase every 18 months? Yeah I know Moore's law isn't really about speed, but still.

Re:Is that enough?

[vpetersen]

It's not even Moore's law, it's Moore's principle.

It's easy to break principles, it's hard to break laws. Laws of physics, criminal law etc.

Re:Is that enough?

[STrinity]

It's not even Moore's law, it's Moore's principle. It's easy to break principles, it's hard to break laws. Laws of physics, criminal law etc.

If you want to be perfectly pedantic, "law" is really an outdated term in science -- they're really theories that remain reasonably accurate under rigorous testing. We still talk about Newton's Laws and the Laws of Thermodynamics for the same reason we refer to Pluto as a planet -- habit.

Re:Is that enough?

[Hoser McMoose]

Originally Moore's law stated that transistor density would double every 12 months. That was fairly quickly changed to say that it would double every 18 months. The current "law" states that transistor density doubles about every 24 months.

Long story short, we haven't really been following Moore's law for a little while, though we do continue to double the amount of bits we can stuff onto a piece of silicon at a fairly rapid pace. Intel's plan to bring out 65nm chips before the end of 2005 continues this trend.

FWIW IBM is also looking to bring out 65nm chips by late 2005/early 2006, while AMD is hoping to get their 65nm fab process up and running in their new fab early in 2006. TSMC and UMC are likely to follow in mid-2006, though I haven't heard any official comments from either.

Re:Is that enough?

[BasharTeg]

"Yeah I know Moore's law isn't really about speed, but still."

But still what? You negated your entire point, and then said "but still." What are people supposed to say to you regarding that but still? I am at a loss as to what to say to that. You're comparing 50% speed increase, to Moore's law which describes a 100% increase in the number of transistors, and you acknowledge that this is an apples to oranges comparison, yet you invite further comments on the topic.

And how on earth did that post get marked insightful?

Re:Is that enough?

[Mattygfunk1]

Personally I find that GPU/RAM/bus speeds count more and more (or is that moore) compared with simply the CPU.

Speed does not necessarily drive repsonsiveness for desktop users.

__

linux web hosting

I believe it works like this:

[mbessey]

On an individual-gate basis, smaller gates use less power, since there's less capacitance at the gate to charge or discharge. Of course, smaller gates mean more components in a given area, which increases power consumption.

These two effects should just about cancel out, since gate capacitance increases with the square of the feature size, and the number of gates drops at the same rate.

Which leaves you with the other effects (including leakage), which are all worse with smaller gates. So, a maximum-size part will have a higher power consumption on a smaller process, but if you took an existing design (like a Pentium 4) and rebuilt it on a smaller process, you should get a lower power consumption (and smaller/cheaper die size).

-Mark

Re:I believe it works like this:

[t0ny]

I think the issue, which addresses the originally commented upon quote, was that all things being equal, making and equivalent to the P4 with the smaller die size would create the performance advantage.

The problem becomes, however, that as they can shrink the processor, they can also pack in even more features. Thus, you have processors which are faster, have hyperthreading, predictive caching, etc, but are somewhat the same size as the 486 (relatively speaking).

Which comes back to the issues posted in the parent posts, which address having denser electronics with a greater need for power. Anyway, to answer the question (but leave the actual research to somebody else), there was an article within the last two weeks regarding Intel's plans to use something other than silicon for making future processors, since as you get smaller and smaller silicon becomes less suited to preventing electrons from 'leaking' into other areas.

PC Toaster

[DigiShaman]

With a large enough heatsink, I could put a few slices of bread between the fins. Not only will this new CPU toast your data, but your breakfast too.

Re:PC Toaster

[jon787]

what is scarier, you thought of it, or somebody did it

Re:PC Toaster

[Anonymous Coward]

cheff could speed up his 11 minute cooking time by running some benchmarks while cooking

well, thats my patch for today

Stupid people do stupid things. :-)

[MacFury]

I've always wondered why it's called Moore's Law.

It's called Moore's Law because the guy at CompUSA would get funny looks if he said Moore's Theorem. Often times you must dumb down your speech and use improper or vague terms to be understood.

Sad and true, a winning combination!

your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

"And now let's repeat the Non-Conformist's Oath! I promise to be different! I promise to be unique! I promise not to repeat things other people say!" -- Steve Martin

ZD editors on vacation

[mackman]

"Leakage, the unintentional dissipation of electricity, among other phenomena, can also inadvertently raise memory consumption." I would have to disagree, unless they're watching Johnny Mnemonic.

Re:ZD editors on vacation

[Selecter]

I think that sentence says Moore about their alcohol consumption than anything else.

Cool, but...

[EverDense]

Wouldn't Moore's Law have failed by now without AMD competing for market share?

Re:Cool, but...

[moehoward]

No. Intel is always competing with itself. They want to make their products obsolete as soon as possible so that people upgrade.

Please mod parent back down, as I have made him look foolish.

Re:Cool, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they do. That is why they bring out slower speed CPUs after the fast ones come out.

Re:Cool, but...

[ultramk]

Wouldn't Moore's Law have failed by now without AMD competing for market share?

No, it wouldn't have. They have the biggest competitor there is, their own product from last year. They need to keep improving and speeding up so that people will see a reason to get rid of their older, perfectly usable computer and replace it with the new model. This is the premise the entire industry is build on.

Admit it, the machines that most people already have are, in most cases, fast enough to do the job they got it for. (exception below)

Aside from video games, (which are on a never-ending upgrade cycle) this sort of demand creation is just about the only thing driving the industry.

The exception: I make my living in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. It'll be a very long time before speed improvements stop mattering to me. (thanks, G5) I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority, though.

m-

Re:Cool, but...

[aka1nas]

Well Intel does need to compete with itself and moore's law is something that their engineers try to fulfill but pressure from AMD has increased the speed by which Intel has ramped up the P4. More significantly, it has reduced the prices of these chips due to increased competition.

Re:Cool, but...

[ad0gg]

What about IBM,Motorolla? Also ram manufactors are looking for small micron size. Not to mention Graphics processors guys like NVIDIA or ATI.

Re:Cool, but...

[dustinmarc]

Wouldn't Moore's Law have failed by now without AMD competing for market share?

I don't think this is because of AMD. I would attribute it more to the fact the Gordon Moore, the creator of Moore's law is a co-founder of Intel and currently the chairman-of-the-board. It's probably more of Intel employees trying to not upset the boss by keeping up with what he obviously feels is the appropriate rate for number of transistors on a chip.

Re:Cool, but...

[IncohereD]

It's all marketing. If they brought out the full range of products in a new line at once, most people would take a mid (or even low) range one. Whereas if you only bring out the high end ones first, the people who absolutely must have the newest thing will be stuck buying high, and then once they've mined that market, they put out the value stuff for the patient people.

It's the same with graphics cards, and I'm sure many other things.

Re:Cool, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't Moore's Law have failed by now without AMD competing for market share?

I guess Sun, IBM, and Motorolla have not been making processors, only Intel and AMD. What would happen if one of those companies went under, I guess the other one would get 100% market share since their are no other processor designers in the world.

Re:Cool, but...

[akuma(x86)]

Why is the parent modded "funny".

Obsoleting their own product is EXACTLY what Intel's business plan is. Why else would someone buy a new chip if their current chip is good enough?

Not really.

[TCaM]

From all I have read the new AMD fab, like most any other will start out at a given process size, likely 90nm in this case, but will be ramped down so to speak. Do you really think they are buying near a billion dollars worth of equipment that isn't in any way upgradeable? Do you think Intel builds entirely new fabs for each new process and just takes the wrecking ball to the old ones?

Also given that intel still isn't shipping any quantity or anything at 90nm I take the 65nm claims with a grain* of salt.

*the process size of said grain may vary

tsarkon - 9 Steps to Greasing your Anus for Yoda

[Anonymous Coward]

9 steps to greasing your anus for Yoda Doll Insertion!
v 3.51.0 $YodaBSD: src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/yodanotes/9.step.p rocess.sgml,v 3.51.0 2003/11/24 18:33:34 tsarkon Exp $

1. Defecate. Preferably after eating senna, ex lax, prunes, cabbage, pickled eggs, and Vietnamese chili garlic sauce. Could be done in the Return of the Jedi wastebasket for added pleasure.
2. Wipe ass with witch hazel, soothes horrific burns. (Taco can use Hazel on mouth to soothe the horrific burns from chowing on ass so much).
3. Prime anus with anal ease. (Now Cherry Flavored for those butthole lickers amongst you - oh, that is most of /.)
4. Slather richly a considerable amount of Vaseline or other anal lubricants into your rectum at least until the bend and also take your Yoda Doll or Yoda soap on a rope and liberally apply it.
5. Pucker your balloon knot several times actuating the sphincter muscle in order to work it in.
6. Put a nigger do-rag on Yoda's head so the ears don't stick out like daggers!
7. Make sure to have a mechanism by which to fish yoda out of your rectum, the soap on the rope is especially useful because that is built in.
8. Slowly rest yourself onto your yoda figurine.
9. Gyrate gleefully in your computer chair while your fat sexless geek nerd loser fat shit self enjoys the prostate massage you'll be getting. Think about snoodling with the Sarlaac pit. Read Slashdot. Masturbate to anime. Email one of the editors hoping they will honor you with a reply. Join several more dating services - this time, you dont check the (desired - speaks english) and (desired - literate). You figure you might get a chance then. Order some fucking crap from Think Geek. Get Linux to boot on a Black And Decker Appliance. Wish you could afford a new computer. Argue that IDE is better than SCSI because you cant afford SCSI. Make claims about how Linux rules. Compile a kernel on your 486SX. Claim to hate windows but use it for Everquest. Admire Ghyslain's courage in making that wonderful star wars movie. Officially convert to the Jedi religion. Talk about how cool Mega Tokyo is. Try and make sure you do your regular 50 story submissions to Slashdot, all of which get rejected because people who arent fatter than CowboyNeal can't submit. Fondle shrimpy penis while making a yoda voice and saying, feel the force, padawan, feeel the foooorce, hurgm. Yes. Yes. When 900 years you reach, a dick half as big you will not have.

All in a days work with a yoda figurine rammed up your ass.

I HAVE A GREASED UP YODA DOLL SHOVED UP MY ASS!

y______________________________YODA_ANUS
o_________________.'_:__`.________________y
d____________.-.'`.__;___.'`.-.___________o
a___________/_:____\_;__/____;_\__________d
s_,'__""--.:__;".-.";:_:".-.":__;.--""__`,a
e_:'_`.t""--.._'/@.`;___',@\`_..--""j.'_`;s
x______`:-.._J_'-.-'L___`--_'_L_..-;'_____e
________"-.___;__.-"__"-.__:___.-"________x
y____________L_'_/.------.\_'_J___________y
o_____________"-.___"--"___.-"____________o
d______________.l"-:_TR_;-";._____________d
a_________.-j/'.;__;""""__/_.'\"-.________a
s_______v.'_/:`._"-.:_____.-"_.';__`.v____s
e____.-"__/_;__"-._"-..-"_.-"__:____"-.___e
x_.+"-.__:_:______"-.__.-"______;-.____\__x
_v;_\__`.;_; I Yoda Have A _____:_:_"+._;_
y_:

wait a second.....

[Paladin_Krone]

intel just said "increase" and "no futher inprovements" in the same sentence. hmm... smells like another P4 gimmic to me. what FSB are those thing running at these days? 1200? heh, if AMD went that way, we'd already have 5gh processors.

Re:Stupid people do stupid things. :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Moore's Law because the guy at CompUSA would get funny looks if he said Moore's Theorem.

The guy at CompUSA does not know of Moore's Law.

Remember kiddies...

[MachineShedFred]

For the most part, clock speed != performance.

Yes it goes to a large part of it within the same processor family, but it doesn't scale at 1:1.

Translation:

[raehl]

"You can make a 80% to 100% price increase without any further improvements."

geezers to take it in the .asp again also?

[Anonymous Coward]

should have known seeing the aarp is a hostage of the payper liesense softwar gangsters' bugwear. fauxking souless corepirate nazis. sheesh!@#$%

that's ok, we'll help take care of the geezers too, thanks.

consult with/trust in yOUR creators... the lights are coming up.

Re:geezers to take it in the .asp again also?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what the FUCK you just said, little kid, but you're special, you reached out, and you touched a brother's heart.

Is that wafer size?

[p3d0]

Don't you mean a 65mm wafer size? Oh wait, I'm thinking of another article.

A virtual certainty

[Alomex]

The superconductor industry has detailed plans which are known set several years in advance.

If 65nm technology is possible, actual design specs have already been approved and work has already started on the design of a fab facility. So there is no speculation in the report.

Re:A virtual certainty

[snoochyboochy]

I'm virtually certain that you meant semiconductor.

I'm also virtually certain that IBM has press-releases concerning nanotube-based transistors, which I'm actually certain has nothing to do with design rules and designing fabs. This smells like nothing more than a paper release, similar to earlier releases/predictions that the semiconductor industry would be standardized on 300mm wafers by now, which has failed to materialize.

Re:A virtual certainty

[Alomex]

I'm virtually certain that you meant semiconductor.

Yup. Brain typo.

I'm also virtually certain that IBM has press-releases concerning nanotube-based transistors, which I'm actually certain has nothing to do with design rules and designing fabs. This smells like nothing more than a paper release,

Slow down, cowboy! I'm not saying it is true. My point is that IF 65 nm mass-produced chips for 2005 are at all possible, then by this time this technology has to be well past the speculative stage and well into the minor details of the fab facility, given the lead times required in the semiconductor industry...

Re:A virtual certainty

[snoochyboochy]

Sorry for the shot off the hip Alomex.. not enough coffee yet.

I think we are at the development point where Moore's law will be broken by economic concerns, rather than technological. The cost of making 90nm is significant, to develop a new design at this technology node will require several million just for the mask set, let alone the additional NRE costs that are figuring into current process node designs (design for test/manufacturing costs are skyrocketing on new technologies). Joe Schmoe chip designer & Co aren't going to be able to afford to spin new chips on 65nm processes using conventional designs. Chip volumes have to be at Intel scales in order to break even. Why push it so hard when 130nm and 90nm are just getting ripe? If Intel is the only customer at the 65mn node, tool vendors are going to be scarce and expensive, posing a further delay to the 65nm production ramp. I'd guess we don't see real production volume at the 65nm node until 07 or later.

Cheers, Snooch

Re:A virtual certainty

[Anonymous Coward]

The breaking of Moore's law has been and always will be a matter of economics.

Intel has just said they can make chips with a 65nm process. So why don't they sell them? Because they can't do it economically yet. They can't mass produce them, and if they could their yeild numbers would probably be bad.

I'm sure they have technology to produce chips with even smaller design rules, but the cost of creating them doesn't fit the market. No one will pay $100,000 for a cpu even if it is 10x faster than current cpus. It's always been a matter of economics.

Re:A virtual certainty

[Anonymous Coward]

I also doubt one builds an entire lab based on speculation: http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/chiz3.j pg

"read the article, f" comes to mind

Apple

[mnemonic_]

You should work for Apple.

I hate intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should sell their leaders into sex slavery in Neverland.

GO AMD!

Only 65!?

[Anonymous Coward]

65? That's an awful low yield...

Questions.

[Veramocor]

1. Approximately how many silicon atoms in a nanometer?

2. Whats the likely minimum amount of atoms that you need for a transister. Would switching materials effect that limit?

Given these two it should be easy to predict the smallest transitor size, and thus when moores law has to end.

Re:Questions.

[henrygb]

This 2001 paper suggests that about three silicon atoms fit into an nanometre and that they could space "bumps" at 38 nanometres. But that was a long time ago.

Re:Questions.

[conan776]

This link describes a transistor made by IBM with a 6nm gate and 4-8nm of silicon. http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/news/2002120 9_transistor.shtml Of course, there's three dimensions involved here, but an atom is about 3 anstroms wide, which is 3 ten billionths of a meter... let's see, carry the two... um. That's about 120-240 atoms across, I guess.

Re:Questions.

[Anonymous Coward]

The pitch between atoms in a plane in a silicon crystal is about 0.14nm.

Re:Questions.

[AFairlyNormalPerson]

3 Angstroms?... errr... that's like 6 bohr. That's a bit on the big side...but if you include all the super heavy atoms (with d anf f electrons and-the-like), it may not be TOO far off. For something like carbon and silicon, look for *bond lengths* between 1.5 and 2.5 angstroms. How big is an atom? How does one define the edge of the atom? This is a topic of sometimes ehated debate. The electrons of an atom don't really stop existing anywhere (other than that place which is infinitely far apart from the nucleus). How does one partition space and electrons between several atoms? It's debatable. Well... a 3 dimensional system. Now you have to consider how the atoms are _packed_ together. You can fit different numbers of the same atom in the same space depending on how they are packed. Do the atoms really take up more/less space or is it just a packing effect and how do you decide how much of the space is those of the atoms in an ideal packing environment? It's a more involved question than perhaps the author intended it to be. Norm

Re:Questions.

[conan776]

Well, yeah. I meant as a rule of thumb. And my math was probably wrong too. But, give or take an order of magnitude....

Yes, "Moore's Law"

[0x0d0a]

The term is correct -- see here for details. Within the realms of science, a law is specifically a generalization that may be made based *on observation*. Moore was making a generalization based on past observation. He was not making a theoretical claim about the future. All this is quite proper for a law. As a matter of fact, if he was hypothesizing that processor speeds will stop doubling in the next twenty years, that would be a hypothesis, since it's not a generalization based on a body of observation.

Also, WRT your mention of a mathematician -- mathematicians are not scientists -- they are in a class of their own, along with logicians and many computer "scientists". This group works with absolutes, with provable concepts. Scientists do not do this. Science is a system designed to deal with observation and produce effective models of observed things.

Useless metrics

[tttonyyy]

Hmm... I'm having trouble visualising 0.57 microns square. Lets see - even with these reduced cell sizes, you'd need 3600 square meters (half the size of a football pitch) of SRAM to have one bit per person on the world.

Assuming a constant 50W/sqr.mm, that'd be 180GW of heat. Someone find me a heatsink for that baby!

Re:Useless metrics

[Bender_]

Hmm... I'm having trouble visualising 0.57 microns square. Lets see - even with these reduced cell sizes, you'd need 3600 square meters (half the size of a football pitch) of SRAM to have one bit per person on the world.

Yes, I know its the fault of the metric system, everything would have been easier with mils, Angstrom and squarefeet.

But the correct result is 0.0036 m^2. Does a Gigabyte of Dram (=8 Billion Bits), which is obtainable in todays technology, take up a football pitch? no!

Faster, Pentium! Kill! Kill!

[Anonymous Coward]

New from Intel: Same shit, higher clock speed (and power consumption, and cooling requirements).

Memo to Intel: "Improving" your CPUs by doing nothing but increasing their clock speeds is like "improving" a car by painting it a sickly yellow color, bolting on a ridiculous fin, and slapping Japanese-language and/or 'Type R' stickers on it.

Only morons are fooled, everyone else knows it's just a fresh coat of paint on the same outhouse.

Re:Faster, Pentium! Kill! Kill!

[drquizas]

What about Centrino? Moore's "Law" can be applied in more than one way. Even if an Intel bean counter doesn't realize the full implication of the decreased feature size, the fact that I haven't heard my laptop fan come on to any audible speed since the 2 seconds after power-on makes me believe that the Intel engineers have figured this one out.

Re:Faster, Pentium! Kill! Kill!

[Naffer]

Well, from what I've heard, the Centrino is a really highly clocked P3 with SSE2 and a few other modifications. The pipeline is much shorter and it has a bigger cache. They're pretty damn expensive though.

Haven't we been here before? .90 blues...

[Chordonblue]

Isn't that close to what they said about moving to .90? That, uh, didn't happen. The Prescott is coming in at over 100 watts - CASES will need to be redesigned to handle the heat output.

Intel bet their farm on being able to ramp up clock speed as opposed to making a more efficient chip (ala Opteron) and they're finding it harder to keep up. Take a look at the efficency of even a Pentium M at 1.3 GHz and you'll see why this is important - at least from a technical standpoint.

But I guess if you're whole marketing plan is based upon clock cycles, .65 *might* be important. All I know is .90 really didn't solve this problem for them to the extent .13 did over .18.

UMMMM Yah!

[_ph1ux_]

I worked at intel - and it is a known fact (at least it has been previously) that it is cheaper to build a completely new fab than to re-tool an existing one.

Fabs cost multiple billions, but it costs even more to dismantel and re-tool a fab for completely new machines, hardware and processes in production.

Re:UMMMM Yah!

[TCaM]

Much of this depends on the initial design of the fab I would think. Also large corporations quite often have a throw away and start fresh because it is cheaper mentality , not because it actually is but because of things like tax loopholes and depreciation. Also factor in that as the jumps between process sizes are becoming more frequent companies are looking more forward and designing fabs with these transitions in mind.

It is expected that amds new fab in dresden will work with 300mm wafers on 65nm and later 45nm processes. Dont you think they would just keep building more fabs instead of upgrading them if it was cheaper to do so?

Of course there are other factors, like tax breaks and government funding and loan guarantees which make building a new fab either good or bad in a given place or time.

Also often times it seems fabs that are less then cutting edge are revamped and used to prodece less cutting edge products or used for third party stuff that doesn't need to be at the current state of the art.

Moore's Conjencture would be fairly accurate..

[Kjella]

You'd figure computer scientists and systems engineers would be a bit more rigorous and call it Moore's Theorem, Moore's Axiom, or Moore's Postulate (I'm not sure what the best terminology is for this kind of conjecture)

Axiom: Unprovable assumption - basic assumption from which you build others? No.
Theorem: Result based on axioms, through a rigorous proof? No.
Postulate: Generally used about an assumption made in a proof. Like, if we postulate that result A is true, this leads to result B. No.
Law: Typically used about phenomenons deducted from reality, like e.g. laws of gravity or termodynamics. Usually, the "lawness" is traced back to a fundamental force of nature. No.
Theory: Usually a descriptive body of some field of science. Typically not used to specify individual results, such as this. No.
Hypothesis: The possible results one intends to prove/disprove. Normally only used in the context of an experiment. No.
Conjecture: Prediction of result without actual proof. Like e.g. Goldbach's Conjecture that all even numbers 4 or over is the sum of two primes. Yes.

Unfortunately, calling it a conjecture doesn't have anywhere near the power of a law. It's mostly a 100$ word for "educated guess". Not to mention they're quite rare, because most have been proven or disproven. Some also have other names for historical reasons, like Fermat's last theorem. Assuming Fermat didn't actually have a working proof, it was really a conjecture.

And at the end of the day, I think everyone can see that Moore's law has no force of law. It's been a fairly good prediction of the future, but it's all free will. If we wanted to stop Moore's "law", we could simply all stop and sing Kumba Ya for a few years.

Kjella

Re:Moore's Conjencture would be fairly accurate..

[Anonymous Coward]

And at the end of the day, I think everyone can see that Moore's law has no force of law. It's been a fairly good prediction of the future, but it's all free will. If we wanted to stop Moore's "law", we could simply all stop and sing Kumba Ya for a few years.

Perhaps we could employ fundamental creationist christian extremists -- they seem to be putting quite the effort into evolution. ;-)

Re:Moore's Conjencture would be fairly accurate..

[rfsayre]

When used as a noun, a "postulate" is a synonym for "axiom."

65nm when 90nm isn't even out yet? hm

[David Jao]

Look, I am not a chip fabrication expert. I am merely a sideline observer. But based on my observations, Intel will probably not make it to 65nm in 2005.

My position is based on nothing more than simple counting:

• Intel achieved 250nm process technology (deschutes) in January 1998
• ... 180nm (coppermine) in October 1999, although availability was scarce until January.
• ... 130nm (northwood) in January 2002
• ... 90nm (prescott) is not out yet, although it is supposed to be out in fourth quarter 2003. I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict January 2004.

Their track record is clear: the average time between circuit size improvements is two years. Based on their history, 2005 would be a stretch, with the most likely release date falling somewhere in early 2006.

Re:65nm when 90nm isn't even out yet? hm

[MtViewGuy]

I believe that the first application Intel will use on the 90nm process is the Prescott-core CPU, the replacement for the Pentium 4. My guess is that Intel will call this new chip the Pentium 5 when it is officially unveiled early in 2004.

Maybe this is the reason why haven't seen Service Pack 2 for Windows XP or Service Pack 5 for Windows 2000--they will incorporate new code that will take full advantage of the additional multimedia instructions offered by the Prescott-core processor.

Size isn't everything...

[Chordonblue]

You know, with better design, it shouldn't matter. If all Intel is planning to do is scale their P4 another generation then I say, 'Big Whoop!'

Look at how the Opteron is kicking ass at only 2.2 GHz! Or for an even more painful example, look at the Pentium M at 1.3 GHz. Unbelievable performance if you want it. But Intel seems hell bent on clock frequency and that's exactly what you get with the P4 designs.

Keep in mind though, ATi totally ruled Nvidia this year with their 9800 Pro design and you know, it's only .15 microns as opposed to Nvidia's 'superior' .13 process. Chip efficiency isn't totally based on wire size.

Re:Size isn't everything...

[Bored Huge Krill]

you seem to be forgetting that in Q1 next year, the Pentium M launches at 90nm, codenamed "Dothan". It isn't just about Pentium 4.

Why do you imagine that the processor design stops just because the process advances to the next gen.

Re:Size isn't everything...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or look at how well Itanium 2 performs at 1.5 GHz...

Re:Size isn't everything...

[Chordonblue]

Oh I don't think anything STOPS. But Intel has a history of renovation rather than innovation. Much of the P4's design was to meet marketing goals rather than performance.

No doubt they'll be using .90 for the Pentium M, great. But right now, their focus appears to be getting the P4 to run faster under 95 watts.

Ooops, for got to square properly

[FuzzyDaddy]

1 square meter = 1 meter*1 meter = (10^6 micron * 10^6 micron) = 10^12 square microns.

1 square meter is NOT 10^6 square microns.

But bonus points for being the first one to make this mistake in this thread, someone always does.

2005? Maybe the end of 05

[doormat]

Look at all the problems they are having with the 90nm process right now? That thing is leaking current like you wouldnt believe. Power dissapation is 90-100W. Heat is a big issue. I'm thinking something is going to have to happen to lower current bigtime. Remember thats 100W at 1.3V or so, for 77A, whereas the current P4's use 70W or so at 1.5V, for 47A.

Re:2005? Maybe the end of 05

[Naffer]

100W isn't that impressive. The high end P4s are putting out close to 80W under load. It's not like out of nowhere power usage skyrocketed.

DirectX bias?

[Drathos]

So.. When Doom III or any other OpenGL based game comes out, will it be listed?

I'm half tempted to see what games it might list for me right now, but it doesn't seem to be available with Mozilla Firebird..

NM Parent

[Drathos]

Ack.. This is what happens when you don't pay attention to which tab out of 30 you click on.. :(

C*ock speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly is "cock speed?" Is that like how fast you get it up? After a certain point, won't you get dicklash? Then you'll need even more all natural male enhancement.

Side note on Moore's Law

[Herger]

Gordon Moore, as in Moore's law, was co-founder of Intel. So one might say they are staying true to their roots...

The power solution

[uglomera]

Power consumed by processors is what I actually worked on for a year. This is a very hot topic in industry right now, and whoever solves it will be a rich man. Some of the startups involved:

www.incep.com
www.volterra.com
www.integralwav e.com

odd, but kind of expected for /. ...

[Bored Huge Krill]

If this had been AMD announcing successfully fabricating a 4Mbit SRAM in 65nm technology in a full size fab, everybody would be leaping up and down screaming about how this would mean the end of the road for Intel.

As it is, rather predictably, we have a million comments about how it all must be BS.

End to Moore's law?

[barichter]

I cannot remember exactly what Moore's law states, but I think it is merely that speed doubles and cost halves every 18 months, or at least something like that. I don't think it was tied to any kind of architecture, though I could be wrong. So, based on that, how can one predict when Moore's law will end? What about new technologies? Quantum computing? Optical? And all the other cool things they think up year after year.

Intel makes miracles happen

[jackstack]

I dunno how many people really appreciate how incredible the contributions that Intel has made.

I recently learned that thier 3GHz processors possess 1.2nm (12Angstroms) gate oxide thickness. I'm not exactly calibrated, but it can't be more than a Si atom conected to an Oxygen connected to a Si atom conected to an Oxygen along the thickness direction. And this is *consistently* done across a 300mm wafer (~1 foot!). It's just insane!

Guess what Intel, I don't want it

[BlueCoder]

I'm sure as hell not going to buy one. The heat issue makes me nervous, but electricity costs money. Am I going to have to call up an electriction to install a dedicated 240 volt circuit just to run a computer? I don't think so. I just don't need it that bad.

Do not make the cores any more complicated, just shrink them and run then at a lower voltage. Not put 8 to 16 cores spaced out in one package. Same power consumption, more computational power. And since you don't need to run the chips at higher voltage and frequencies, you get more yield for those extra cores.

And BTW, this is way too soon for 65 nm. I just don't believe it. Maybe by late 2006.

BTW, on your next chip set, please kill the floppy controller and just rely on the BIOS to use a USB floppy drive if someone really needs it. On my next system I'm not even going to bother putting a floppy drive in it and instead rely on flash memory. You might as well kill the serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports in the chipset and similarly rely on them connected through USB. If someone really needs the real deal then they can install a PCI card for such lagacy support. But be sure to include 1394 support just so USB isn't overly relied upon and there is an alternative.

65nm?

[NeoGeo64]

How about introducing a decent 64bit chip by 2005. Then I'll be impressed.

Dumbasses.

[ProtonMotiveForce]

You people are flamingly stupid.

You seem to have this idiotic idea that the 'best' way to get performance is to get better IPC, not more MHz. What a stupid idea. Whatever makes the processor perform better is the 'best' way.

And, stupid ass, given some static architecture XX, XX running at 3.5GHz will always be faster than XX running at 2.3GHz. No matter what your architecture you want it to run faster.

The stupidity of you assholes boggles the mind.

Re:Dumbasses.

[jo42]

...then these fudge-packers nullify any gains in performance by writing code in Java, C#, with eye candy on top...

FutureWare is Great!

[4of12]

It's great accomplishment that 65 nm chips are sampling but projecting out into the future has always struck me as silly. "will produce in 2005" is rather like:

"Cisco to roll out Gigabit WiFi in 2009",

"AMD to sell x86-96 chips in 2010",

"Microsoft Longhorn Will Read Your Mind in 2008"

"Dell Credit-Card Server to Eliminate Cash"

Come on, moderators

[FuzzyDaddy]

It wasn't that informative.