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I miss Moore's law
lcmgadgets:
Another issue I understand is, literally, the clock. Way back, the early computers were a lot less reliable than the 1's now, & it made sense to have a system clock that forced the cpu to literally stop, check all its work, correct errors, & continue. Now error correction isn't nearly as needed, & the clock is become a limiting factor. Intel started xperimenting with clock less chips a few years ago, & found they could make significant speed leaps by eliminating it. Problem is, all the architecture up to now has been based around that clock, & to change it now...
Another way to make a huge leap in computing power/speed: analog.
lilshawn:
there are TONS of bottlenecks in computers, and depending on how old they are, can vary wildly.
a 3GHZ cpu connecting to DDR ram at only 200mhz
VS
a 3 ghz CPU connecting to DDR3 ram at 225mhz
now 25mhz doesn't sound all that fast does it? But it's 0.4 gigatranfers per second per second VS 1.8 gigatranfers a second...nearly 5 times the data.
of course this is modern enough the the memory comptroller is built into the CPU, back in the day the CPU had to connect to the memory (SDRAM) through the Northbridge (which often ran 10 or more times slower than the CPU)
for example a 1000 mhz cpu connecting to a FSB of 250 mhz northbridge to a bus at 133mhz to ram... by comparison modern DDR3 (1800) transfers data 14 times faster than SDRAM.
manufacturers have been working for years to increase the bus speeds and figured it out that it was best to integrate things into the CPU since that was the fastest thing in there. The Athlon64 marked the introduction of an integrated memory controller being incorporated into the processor itself allowing the processor to directly access and handle memory, negating the need for a traditional northbridge to do so. Intel followed suit in 2008 with the release of its Core i series CPUs and the X58 platform with PCH. Now your CPU handles memory and even more recently video and PCIe functions because the data rates required are getting bigger and bigger...you can't afford to be "waiting for the bus". Even rudimentary tasks normally handled by the "super IO" chip have been handed off to the southbridge. hell, some computers don't even do a southbridge anymore and have the northbridge take care of it...or just eliminate it completely as evidenced by the elimination of such features as serial, parallel, floppy drive ports, ps2 mouse and keyboard connections on some of the newer boards.
So really, processors aren't getting faster per se, the computer as a whole is becoming more efficient since now we don't have to waste 1000's of computer cycles for a slow assed bus to retrieve information from somewhere else.