4 ms·
Only if you assume that there's a one-to-one correspondence between transistors and processing power. That is, it doesn't take into account improved microarchit
by a-priori 15y ago
Only if you assume that there's a one-to-one correspondence between transistors and processing power. That is, it doesn't take into account improved microarchitecture (e.g. speculative execution, pipelines and cache management) that more efficiently use a given number of transistors.
- Someone 15y agoIsn't the different architecture more of an "if you want to meaningfully use more transistors, you will have to do it something differently" than of an "we can do faster if we do things differently?" I would expect that any micro-architecture effects would be relatively marginal, relative to the rough number Moore's law gives. So, I think, at the resolution of Moore's law, "number of transistors double"' and "processing power doubles" are equivalent. Another related 'law' is "CPUs gain a bit every 18 months". That metric predicts 6 years between outgrowing 4 bits and outgrowing 8bit CPUs, 12 years before needing 16 bits, 24 for needing 64 bits, and indicates we will not need a 128bits CPU on the desktop before 2050 or so (of course, all if we manage to stretch Moore's law that far) I think that is in the right ballpark.