3 ms·

I wonder if this isn't why Moore's Law appears to be slowing down. Maybe there are still huge gains to be made but the economic drive is not there.

by api 8y ago

magduf 8y ago
It's slowed down for several reasons: 1) We hit a brick wall with silicon clock speeds. Silicon apparently can only go 3-4GHz; after that, there's too many switching losses, too much power used, etc. 2) Because of #1, we jumped on the multi-core bandwagon. This worked OK for a while, but most tasks can only be broken up and run in parallel so much. You can't just throw 1000 cores at every problem and expect it to scale. For anything with user interaction, this is especially true, so there's no point in having more than 4-8 cores on a single-user machine. 3) For the stuff normal people do, there just isn't much demand for more speed any more. How much faster do you need MS Excel to calculate your spreadsheet, or PowerPoint to show you slides?
- berbec 8y ago
  I'd also argue: 4) cpu speed isn't the limiting factor many times now. Disk, memory, network, user input etc all are much more impactful honestly. Sure getting a Blender run down 10% is huge, but what is that time saved compared to how long setting up the render took?
- api 8y ago
  (3) is what I'm talking about though. There is not enough demand for smaller and lower power processors because at the edge where size and power matter the most there are not enough applications that can profitably use more power. Data centers are easier to scale by just adding more nodes. Power matters a lot in data centers but otherwise miniaturization is less critical and single threaded performance is less critical.
- atq2119 8y ago
  The actual Moore's law is about integration of transistors. That is mostly slowing down because the physics of semiconductor manufacturing have been getting increasingly ridiculous for the last 5-10 years. Using photolithography to build features with sizes smaller than the wavelength of the laser being used has been normal for years now. That's the level of ridiculousness we're talking about here.

I wonder if this isn't why Moore's Law appears to be slowing down. Maybe there are still huge gains to be made but the economic drive is not there.

by api 8y ago

I wonder if this isn't why Moore's Law appears to be slowing down. Maybe there are still huge gains to be made but the economic drive is not there.

magduf 8y ago

It's slowed down for several reasons: 1) We hit a brick wall with silicon clock speeds. Silicon apparently can only go 3-4GHz; after that, there's too many switching losses, too much power used, etc. 2) Because of #1, we jumped on the multi-core bandwagon. This worked OK for a while, but most tasks can only be broken up and run in parallel so much. You can't just throw 1000 cores at every problem and expect it to scale. For anything with user interaction, this is especially true, so there's no point in having more than 4-8 cores on a single-user machine. 3) For the stuff normal people do, there just isn't much demand for more speed any more. How much faster do you need MS Excel to calculate your spreadsheet, or PowerPoint to show you slides?

berbec 8y ago
I'd also argue: 4) cpu speed isn't the limiting factor many times now. Disk, memory, network, user input etc all are much more impactful honestly. Sure getting a Blender run down 10% is huge, but what is that time saved compared to how long setting up the render took?
api 8y ago
(3) is what I'm talking about though. There is not enough demand for smaller and lower power processors because at the edge where size and power matter the most there are not enough applications that can profitably use more power. Data centers are easier to scale by just adding more nodes. Power matters a lot in data centers but otherwise miniaturization is less critical and single threaded performance is less critical.
atq2119 8y ago
The actual Moore's law is about integration of transistors. That is mostly slowing down because the physics of semiconductor manufacturing have been getting increasingly ridiculous for the last 5-10 years. Using photolithography to build features with sizes smaller than the wavelength of the laser being used has been normal for years now. That's the level of ridiculousness we're talking about here.