Microarchitecture performance innovation continues (the M1, Zen3, and Alder Lake cores are all significant improvements over their predecessors), and transistor

Microarchitecture performance innovation continues (the M1, Zen3, and Alder Lake cores are all significant improvements over their predecessors), and transistor performance and density continues to increase. We're on the verge of new transistor architecture (FinFET -> GAA) and shrinks and other advancements continue. Single chip processors have not reached their limits in terms of . For some applications, one piece of silicon is not enough, and that has been true for ever. Early cores were built with multiple chips, later ones had separate cache or FPU add ons, we had (and still have) SMP multi-processors that wire up many chips together, we have discrete GPUs. So in any given year, with any given silicon technology and logic design, we have virtually always reached the limit of single chip processors, and gone beyond them with multiple chips. And at the same time, the limits of single chip processors have continued to expand year after year. Both of these things remain true. Relative performance improvements have slowed significantly from where they were 20-30 years ago, but things are still ticking along.