For the most part, manufacturing advances drive microarchitecture advances. Smaller feature sizes mean more transistors can be stuffed in the same area. Those t

For the most part, manufacturing advances drive microarchitecture advances. Smaller feature sizes mean more transistors can be stuffed in the same area. Those transistors can be used to make larger reorder buffers, more registers, more caches, better branch predictors, and more functional units. If you want to know about specific architectural changes in x86 over the years, I strongly recommend Cliff Click's talk: A Crash Course in Modern Hardware.[1] A lot of the specifics of semiconductor manufacturing are closely-guarded secrets, but Todd Fernandez gave a glimpse in an informal talk titled Inseparable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips.[2] 1. http://www.infoq.com/presentations/click-crash-course-modern-hardware http://www.infoq.com/presentations/click-crash-course-modern... (starts about 4 minutes in) 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4