3 ms·
There is also another fundamental limit, the speed of light. Because of the special relativity theory nothing including electrical current can transmit informa
by inlineint 10y ago
There is also another fundamental limit, the speed of light.
Because of the special relativity theory nothing including electrical current can transmit information faster than the speed of light (c = 3*10^10 cm/s). So if maximum size dimension of your CPU is say 2cm (I'm ignoring that they actually can have multiple smaller cores), then the maximum physically achievable frequency is upper bounded by size/c = 15 GHz.
Although it has not been reached yet, it has the same order of magnitude as the record frequencies achieved by overclockers using liquid nitrogen cooling (something a little below 9 GHz). Also it shows that reducing transistor size and as a consequence overall CPU size increases maximum physically allowed frequency.
- unixhero 10y agoThank you for your synaptic sugar this morning. It saved an incredibly boring meeting during a long track implementation project.
- Dylan16807 10y agoIt's very easy to design a CPU such that signals do not have to cross it in one cycle. The speed of light is unlikely to ever cap the speed of a CMOS processor.