5 ms·
the physical limitation of more CPUs: heat, which in turn downgrades performance
by nsonha 3y ago
the physical limitation of more CPUs: heat, which in turn downgrades performance
- mikepurvis 3y agoBut I think the GP's point is that heat is far easier managed when spread out over a larger area, so why all the emphasis on ultra tiny transistors vs just making a chip that's two inches by two inches or something? And I think the main answer to that comes when you look at some of the discourse around Apple's M-series chips, that doing a larger-die design is just way riskier: there are huge implications on cost, yield, flexibility, etc, so it was really something that Apple was uniquely positioned to move aggressively on vs a player like Qualcomm who needs to be way more conservative in what they try to sell to their main customers (phone OEMs like Samsung).
- dist-epoch 3y ago> making a chip that's two inches by two inches These already exist. Lookup images of AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX - 96 cores: https://www.techpowerup.com/img/fp51OPD4JRS7wvTK.jpg https://www.techpowerup.com/img/fp51OPD4JRS7wvTK.jpg
- dontlaugh 3y agoThose are made up of much smaller chiplets. No individual die is all that big
- ls612 3y agoOh the reason they don’t make dies that big is the probably of a defect balloons and your yields would be shit.
- mikepurvis 3y agoApple handles that in part by fusing off the broken subcomponents of the huge die, though, which is how they end up with stuff like a 7-core GPU.
- Detrytus 3y agoEvery chip manufacturer does that, that's how they come up with cheap, low end parts. They just try to keep number of cores an even number, so the trick is less obvious.