4 ms·
Really ignorant question, but does size reduction affect heat dissipation at all?
by notheguyouthink 9y ago
Really ignorant question, but does size reduction affect heat dissipation at all?
- pjc50 9y agoSort of: thinner wires have higher resistance, so what tends to happen is you get slightly more heat but in a much smaller space. Heat dissipation has become a major limiting factor.
- tlb 9y agoYes. Most of the power goes into charging and discharging the capacitance inherent in each wire and transistor gate every time a signal changes. When you shrink by 2x, the capacitance goes down by about 4x (because it's proportional to area) and power goes down 4x also. (It's not exactly square-law, because the sides of wires have capacitance too, but at least at larger sizes it was close.) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling for details.