3 ms·
It's not apples-to-apples to compare raw clock rates between semiconductor processes; Intel's 386 was intially fabbed on 1.5μ then shrunk to 1.0μ process (Intel
by smcin 3y ago
It's not apples-to-apples to compare raw clock rates between semiconductor processes; Intel's 386 was intially fabbed on 1.5μ then shrunk to 1.0μ process (Intel CHMOS III and IV), whereas MIPS R2000 was 2.0μ, fabless and relied on Sierra, Toshiba, then in 1987 LSI, IDT and other licensees [0][1].
Back in the 1980s/90s/2000s, Intel was consistently a process generation or two ahead of competitors. That was one of their main sources of advantage.
Just imagine if MIPS had been able to fab on Intel process.
[0]: https://www.righto.com/2023/10/intel-386-die-versions.html https://www.righto.com/2023/10/intel-386-die-versions.html
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R2000_microprocessor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R2000_microprocessor
- thesz 3y agoAnd you are also confirm that in order to have higher clock frequency you need more than just pipelining. Thank you. I also think that 1.5x difference in clock speeds cannot be directly attributed to the difference between node size (lambda): difference in lambdas 1.3(3)=2.0/1.5 at the introduction of the 80386 and R2000 is noticeably less than 1.47=12.5/8.5.
- smcin 3y agoSmaller transistors are faster, but the relationship between clock frequency and 1/feature size isn't necessarily linear like you're assuming. https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/27875/moores-law-and-clock-speed https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/27875/moores-law-and-...
- thesz 3y agoMy assumption is that speedup is less than lambda's ratio.