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The Quest for More Processing Power

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the but-i-want-it-now dept.

Hack Jandy writes "AnandTech has a very thorough, but not overly technical, article detailing CPU scaling over the last decade or so. The author goes into specific details on how CPUs have overcome limitations of die size, instruction size and power to design the next generation of chips. Part I, published today, talks specifically about the limitations of multiple cores and multiple threads on processors."

5 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. More power will lead to more bloat.. by klang · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's what's been happening the last 10-15 years. Where are the indications that "time to market" and "sloppy programming" will suddenly vanish?

    1. Re:More power will lead to more bloat.. by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Hey, I shop at Ikea. The stuff isn't event assembled. It's a flat box full of precision cut boards with bolts and one of those funky allen keys.

      Getting back to your point, there is still a market for hand-coders. With most consumer electronics, I'm talking kid's toys, alarm clocks, talking dolls, you try to shave off every penny you can in manufacturing costs. Plus, once you start a product line, you run it out for years.

      In that case, of high volume and low cost, it is easy to absorb the cost of a $100,000 hand coder. Especially if he can save you $0.10 a unit on lines where volume is measured in the millions of units.

      Besides, most of the "hand coders" I know work more in the $36,000 dollar range.

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  2. x86 centric by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Might want to point out that the article is x86 centric. Not that it only applies to x86, indeed many/most of the issues are just generally related to processors (single vs multi-core, trace lengths, etc), but the article definitely focus' on these issues as applies to the x86.

  3. Re:User defined branch prediction by Mauvaisours · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is already what you have : you have a general purpose CPU (Intel or AMD), graphics CPU (Nvidia or ATI), audio CPU, MPEG en/decoding, DSP, Vector, ...

  4. Re:Myth of the single threaded desktop by hackstraw · · Score: 2, Insightful

    1) Programming for two or more processors is more work, and prone to more subtle and strange errors.

    Threaded apps, and multitasking OSes have been around for years. Even if an app is single threaded, the user is still benefited by having 2 or more processors because the system is still very responsive, even if one app has one CPU completely pegged.