DEC_42

A friend asked me if we'd ever see the day where 2.4THz CPUs were commonplace. I didn't rightly know the answer to that because while the jump from MHz to GHz was fairly quick, we're still only at 2.4GHz average, not 266GHz average. And then new architectures might just be so efficient clock per clock to keep ourselves in the GHz range, maybe even still in the 1GHz-3.3GHz stock range.

What do you guys think?

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ubunix

i think there both play an important part in preformace,
I say architecture is way more import though, It would be interesting seeing a terehertz microprocessor thou

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bobdragster

I think the reason we are still in the sub-4Ghz range is because all we need for higher performance is better architecture. I'm sure one day there will be a new architecture that will allow higher and higher reference clocks and multi's, but til then, the companies are making good money by constantly updating architectures.

EDIT:
Come to think of it, it may actually go backwards. I mean what if they created a 50Mhz CPU that could outperform the fastest OC'd i7 out there? I'm sure it will happen, but I have no idea when.

Manyak

In our lifetime? No. Even if they could theoretically make a CPU that fast there's no way the traces on the motherboard could support it. Crosstalk between traces would make it impossible.

The fastest frequency motherboard traces can handle is about 300GHz.

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TurboTurtle

This.

Plus, think of what you're saying when you say "The jump from MHz to GHz was pretty quick".

1 MHz = 1,000,000 Hz.
1 GHz = 1,000 MHz = 1,000,000,000 Hz.
1 THz = 1,000 GHz = 1,000,000,000,000 Hz.

When we went from MHz to GHz, specifically 800MHz to 1GHz mainstream, all that was added was 200 million Hz, as opposed to the 200 billion it would take to go from 800GHz to 1THz - you increase by a factor of 10x each tier.

For us to get out of the GHz range we'd have to have trace that can handle frequencies 250x-333x faster than the current fastest (mainstream) CPUs. In addition to that, think what a Hz is - one clock cycle per second. So 2GHz = 2 billion cycles per second

Now, you don't get exactly that every second, but it's in the ballpark. Now, in that same second you'd have to squeeze in 1 trillion cycles to hit a 1THz CPU. With our current technology? Not possible for quite a while.


CPU speed and architecture is similar to a car's horsepower and transmission. You can have all the horsepower in the world and then some, but if you don't have a decent transmission - you'll be looking up the tailpipe of the guy in front of you with 1/2 the horsepower but a top-of-the-line tranny.

EDIT:
For clarity look at the Celeron OC record - 8.1GHz and it was still blown away by a stock i7, and was outpaced by a moderately OC'd C2Q I believe in overall performance. More cores at lower clock > less cores at much greater clocks.

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ELmo1989

With raise clocks won't we still run into the need for more watts? And Heat?

If so.
And everything going to the "Green Thing".
Those two are going to make a difference.

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Idiot

I say Faster...
High frequency and fast architecture.

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porschedrifter

2.4THz CPUs?! Not unless you want a glowing cpu and a real heater/source of radiation......

Anyway, on the real side... I think we are going to go along the route of more cores than faster clocks...

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Odel

Couldn't agree more. More cores is way less work on the designers, but more on the coders...

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r4zr

Definitely lower clocks/more cores. With current trends toward GPGPU computing and multi-cored processors, eventually all programming will be for parallel-processing, with the cpu acting much like current GPUs, only designed for math.

Lookin' forward to it.