Hi, I am elemein, I am currently trying to give myself a crash course on trying to learn about computers and how they work and probably will be doing this for a year or two until I gain a very good understanding (I've gotten good at self-learning things after I learned more about cars than I'll ever need in my life last year...)
Anyway, I am curious about a few things:
Mainly, what gets better every year in PCs?
Now, I am going to keep this restricted to silicon chips as they are the primary chips I am trying to learn about.
Anyway; the reason I ask this question is mainly because every year I only see an increase of a few things:
1: Clock Speed & 2: Number of Cores
Now, clock speed, to my understanding, is the interval in which a CPU processes information and fires off electrical signals throughout the die in the CPU with certain inputs of information in order to get certain outputs; those outputs are given to other components which I will learn about later (I'm focusing on processors at the moment.) So basically, the faster the clock speed, the higher the amount of intervals done in a specific amount of time.
Now, faster clock speed obviously results in a faster computer; that makes sense.
Now, what I also see is the number of cores increasing. This is, to my understanding, multiple processor sets put into one die; so that a multitude of intervals can be completed in the same amount of time.
Now that's all fine and dandy, but why aren't the number of transistors increased? I understand that the industry has moved from the 45 nm transistor the the 32 nm transistor lately (probably even smaller by now), but why are the numbers never advertised? To my understanding (what this particular video teaches me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBDoT8o4q00&feature=related ), having twice the amount of transistors allows for twice the amount of instructions to be completed in each interval; no? Logically, if two chips are identical except one uses 64nm transistors and the other uses 32nm transistors (therefore the 32nm can fit twice the number of transistors on the chip), wouldnt the 32nm CPU be able to do twice the amount of work in the same time? I dont understand why this stuff isnt advertised as much as it should be... Usually only clock speed and cores are advertised. Am I wrong in my understanding?
Also, one quick question; this video teaches me that every character has a corresponding binary code (am I correct?), is the interpretation and production of these codes exactly what the CPU's purpose is to do?
Sorry for all the questions; I'm just trying to learn...
Thank you all who reply!
Anyway, I am curious about a few things:
Mainly, what gets better every year in PCs?
Now, I am going to keep this restricted to silicon chips as they are the primary chips I am trying to learn about.
Anyway; the reason I ask this question is mainly because every year I only see an increase of a few things:
1: Clock Speed & 2: Number of Cores
Now, clock speed, to my understanding, is the interval in which a CPU processes information and fires off electrical signals throughout the die in the CPU with certain inputs of information in order to get certain outputs; those outputs are given to other components which I will learn about later (I'm focusing on processors at the moment.) So basically, the faster the clock speed, the higher the amount of intervals done in a specific amount of time.
Now, faster clock speed obviously results in a faster computer; that makes sense.
Now, what I also see is the number of cores increasing. This is, to my understanding, multiple processor sets put into one die; so that a multitude of intervals can be completed in the same amount of time.
Now that's all fine and dandy, but why aren't the number of transistors increased? I understand that the industry has moved from the 45 nm transistor the the 32 nm transistor lately (probably even smaller by now), but why are the numbers never advertised? To my understanding (what this particular video teaches me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBDoT8o4q00&feature=related ), having twice the amount of transistors allows for twice the amount of instructions to be completed in each interval; no? Logically, if two chips are identical except one uses 64nm transistors and the other uses 32nm transistors (therefore the 32nm can fit twice the number of transistors on the chip), wouldnt the 32nm CPU be able to do twice the amount of work in the same time? I dont understand why this stuff isnt advertised as much as it should be... Usually only clock speed and cores are advertised. Am I wrong in my understanding?
Also, one quick question; this video teaches me that every character has a corresponding binary code (am I correct?), is the interpretation and production of these codes exactly what the CPU's purpose is to do?
Sorry for all the questions; I'm just trying to learn...
Thank you all who reply!
