5 ms·
I wish the industry would move to transistors per mm or something instead of bongus "nm" numbers that are meaningless - 91 to 171 MTr/mm^2 even sounds more impr
by zanny 7y ago
I wish the industry would move to transistors per mm or something instead of bongus "nm" numbers that are meaningless - 91 to 171 MTr/mm^2 even sounds more impressive then whatever 7 to 5 nm means.
- fspeech 7y agoIt depends on the mix of circuits. Memory don't follow same design rules as logic so can scale quite well. Logic density may well be limited more by power dissipation than by design rules. In other words you can pack some circuits a lot denser than others. I do agree that it is frustrating for someone from the outside to understand exactly what kind of scaling one can expect.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- miguelisolano 7y agoIndeed. Performance per watt is all that ultimately matters IMO.
- jzwinck 7y agoCPU purchase cost matters too. The electricity cost of one 100W CPU might be around 500 USD per year in a datacenter. Assuming 5 years useful lifetime that's 2500 USD per CPU. But cheaper CPUs can easily cost 1000 USD less, so even if they're 20% less efficient they may still come out ahead.
- londons_explore 7y agoA 100 watt CPU in any modern data center would be at an incremental cost of well under $40. Data centers get cheap bulk power, cooling is mostly passive now (evaporative) and backup power systems are also a lot cheaper now compared to the compute cost than in the past.
- akvadrako 7y agoIt’s especially important for CPUs at home and which are rarely stressed.