4 ms·

I still read about claims that Moore's law is ending due to quantum tunneling because the transistors are getting too tiny.

jrockway 4y ago
What is Moore's law up to these days? I feel like that, as a user, nothing got faster for about a decade between 2010 and 2020 (not quite right, more like 2012-2018). Instead everyone was like "oh it requires less air conditioners in a data center!" or "uh we're out of ideas, have 32 cores". OK, but I need more FPS from my game. I have a great air conditioner. That seems to have changed in the last couple years, though. AMD and Apple seem to have gotten serious. (I know, Moore's law is about transistor count, and I guess adding more cores technically increases the transistor count. But as a software engineer, I need my chips to get 2x faster every 18 months, or I'll have to start using a profiler or something!)
- Symmetry 4y ago
  It used to be that when you shrank a transitor you would be able increase clock speeds by default thanks to something called Dennard scaling. That stopped happening in the mid 2000s. Price per transistor, transistor density, and energy efficiency are all continuing to get better exponentially but new semiconductor plants are also going up in price exponentially so more and more companies are dropping out of the race. You can look at the Wikichip page to see how much attrition there's been. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node
- ahartmetz 4y ago
  Hey, performance tuning is fun! You should try it.
- imtringued 4y ago
  I upgraded from Ivy Bridge to a Ryzen 2700, the difference is extreme. One of those could barely encode a 1080p stream in real time the other one can encode at least eight and probably 16 but I never needed that many.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
_hypx 4y ago
With finFETs the transistors are not physically getting smaller anymore. Instead, by making taller and taller finFETs, you can squeeze the transistors closer without actually having smaller transistors. By some definitions, you can say Moore’s Law is already over, or at least no long operates via the traditional methods.

jrockway 4y ago

What is Moore's law up to these days? I feel like that, as a user, nothing got faster for about a decade between 2010 and 2020 (not quite right, more like 2012-2018). Instead everyone was like "oh it requires less air conditioners in a data center!" or "uh we're out of ideas, have 32 cores". OK, but I need more FPS from my game. I have a great air conditioner. That seems to have changed in the last couple years, though. AMD and Apple seem to have gotten serious. (I know, Moore's law is about transistor count, and I guess adding more cores technically increases the transistor count. But as a software engineer, I need my chips to get 2x faster every 18 months, or I'll have to start using a profiler or something!)

Symmetry 4y ago
It used to be that when you shrank a transitor you would be able increase clock speeds by default thanks to something called Dennard scaling. That stopped happening in the mid 2000s. Price per transistor, transistor density, and energy efficiency are all continuing to get better exponentially but new semiconductor plants are also going up in price exponentially so more and more companies are dropping out of the race. You can look at the Wikichip page to see how much attrition there's been. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node
ahartmetz 4y ago
Hey, performance tuning is fun! You should try it.
imtringued 4y ago
I upgraded from Ivy Bridge to a Ryzen 2700, the difference is extreme. One of those could barely encode a 1080p stream in real time the other one can encode at least eight and probably 16 but I never needed that many.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

_hypx 4y ago

With finFETs the transistors are not physically getting smaller anymore. Instead, by making taller and taller finFETs, you can squeeze the transistors closer without actually having smaller transistors. By some definitions, you can say Moore’s Law is already over, or at least no long operates via the traditional methods.