In the past, the increase of transistor count and density meant that a CPU could be designed to run at a higher frequency and have cleverer circuitry which allo

In the past, the increase of transistor count and density meant that a CPU could be designed to run at a higher frequency and have cleverer circuitry which allowed it to do more each cycle. This is the source of the misconception that Moore's Law is directly tied to performance. Looking at a modern Intel chip, the CPU cores take about 30% of the area, with the rest of the transistors spent elsewhere (L3 cache, integrated graphics, system and memory controllers).