The Quest for More Processing Power

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."

Comments

More power will lead to more bloat..

[klang]

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?

Re:More power will lead to more bloat..

[EvilTwinSkippy]

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.

x86 centric

[Anonymous Coward]

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.