6 ms·

When did CPUs break 5-6GHz? It feels surprising to see that high GHz number after being conditioned that "clock speed can't go up anymore, so number of cores go

When did CPUs break 5-6GHz? It feels surprising to see that high GHz number after being conditioned that "clock speed can't go up anymore, so number of cores go up" and not seeing anything much higher than 4GHz

qwezxcrty 3y ago
Maybe never? Bram Nauta's ISSCC 2024 talk covered this and worth watching.
- sapiogram 3y ago
  https://youtu.be/THJP_HB5HEk?si=gmdl6vIBVREc5rpA https://youtu.be/THJP_HB5HEk?si=gmdl6vIBVREc5rpA Link for the lazy
re-thc 3y ago
A long time ago. AMD was famously first with 5ghz 10 years ago and then Intel not too long later.
- zokier 3y ago
  AMD got 5GHz with Raphael in 2022, Intel hit it few years earlier with Coffee Lake in 2018. (no, fx-9590 does not count)
adastra22 3y ago
Just today there was news of a 9GHz overclocking record. It was cooled with liquid helium though.
- LorenDB 3y ago
  IIRC 9 GHz was broken a year or so ago: https://www.pcmag.com/news/intels-core-i9-13900k-processor-gets-overclocked-to-9ghz https://www.pcmag.com/news/intels-core-i9-13900k-processor-g...
ls612 3y ago
Very recently: 12900K: 5.2 GHz peak 13900K: 5.8 GHz peak 14900K: 6.0 GHz peak 14900KS: 6.2 GHz peak
- hulitu 3y ago
  For how many milliseconds ?
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - deleted 3y ago
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  - automatic6131 3y ago
    Single core only, for a good few seconds at full whack - if you have the enthusiast-grade cooling
    - jajko 3y ago
      Which sort of defeats whole purpose for >95% of the target market - super loud machines are extremely annoying to everybody, and all non-it (and most it) folks look at them as failed engineering/pc building effort.
      - Sharlin 3y ago
        I don't think aircooling is going to do it for these – though even watercooling can become loud if stressed. I guess phase-change heat pumps are the logical next step. Peltier cooling is of course totally silent, and enthusiasts dabbled on it already back in the 90s – not sure how common it's these days outside astrophoto imaging rigs. But you can fairly easily get temperature deltas of around 100 kelvin with a Peltier heat pump. You'd still have to dissipate the heat somehow, of course.
        kvmet 3y ago
icegreentea2 3y ago
Intel got 5GHz back in 2019 with the i9-9900XE. The X900-suffixsuffix lines have been Intel's "screw it, we need the highest single core performance" product spot for a long time, and really what that SKU can do is really not a real reflection on any other part of the product line or what is even "reasonable", just what is "possible" (barely). On the other hand, Intel did get the 12700k to 5GHz in 2021. That's an actual flagship part that actual people might actually buy for an actual purpose. When Intel ran into their 14nm woes and started actually getting pushed by AMD, Intel responded by upping their core counts (part way) to erode the AMD core count advantage, while really leaning into their single core performance advantage (which was truly a real thing in Zen1/2) by really starting to up their clock speeds.
- wtallis 3y ago
  > not a real reflection on any other part of the product line or what is even "reasonable", just what is "possible" (barely) As an example: to hit these speeds, Intel and AMD are pushing 1.4V into chips built on processes that work best at and below 1V. And the result isn't a stable, long-lasting chip: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39478551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39478551
  - bustling-noose 3y ago
    this is also why servers and chips that run for a long long time (think servers that aren’t decommissioned for years) don’t run such high voltages and clock speeds. What I would want to know is what happens to these good binned chips when you lower their voltages and frequencies and run them at a more reasonable 3.5GHz or something for a long time. Is the price / power / performance ratio better than a server chip or is it worse ? Would love some data on that. But no one is buying these for it and server chips have different things going on for them like being able to replace the chip for years etc. still would be interesting to find out if these the best ‘quality’ chips out there
    - josephg 3y ago
      > What I would want to know is what happens to these good binned chips when you lower their voltages and frequencies and run them at a more reasonable 3.5GHz or something for a long time I'm not sure about intel chips, but amd's last couple generations of chips have an "eco mode" which underclocks the chip for you. You get about 85-100% of the performance while consuming 60% as much power. The chips probably last way longer like that too. NVidia's GPUs have similar options. 3090/4090 cards can have a totally reasonable power budget if you're happy to lose ~10% of your framerate. Arstechnica added eco mode to their benchmarks: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/ryzen-7950x3d-review-an-expensive-but-incredibly-efficient-16-core-cpu/4/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/ryzen-7950x3d-review...
throw_nbvc1234 3y ago
If you have the ability to cool the cpu then it's not a hard limit; just one that's not practical for mainstream consumers.
neogodless 3y ago
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/158178-amd-unveils-worlds-first-5ghz-cpu https://www.extremetech.com/computing/158178-amd-unveils-wor... Officially, 10-11 years ago. (This first 5Ghz CPU wasn't that impressive, and part of the reason "chasing Mhz" started to fade into irrelevance.) For modern AMD, it wasn't until 2022 that they ventured back across 5Ghz, but this time it's much more impressive. https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/23/23137217/amd-ryzen-7000-cpu-am5-motherboard-specs-details-5nm https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/23/23137217/amd-ryzen-7000-c...
- unnah 3y ago
  Before that, IBM POWER6 reached 5 GHz in 2008: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER6
roenxi 3y ago
People say a lot of things that are not technically true. CPU speeds will probably keep going up for years or decades. But when CPU Hz were rising, the routine was things like 4MHz -> 8MHz every other year or so. Going from 4 to 6GHz over around 10-20 years is, effectively, flat compared to the rate of change people were dealing with before the year 2000.
chx 3y ago
2010, IBM z196 was 5.2GHz, then in 2012 the zEC12 was 5.5GHz. As always, the consumer world follows with a bit of lag.
c2h5oh 3y ago
Technically AMD had CPUs boosting to 5GHz in 2013, but it was the horrible buldozer FX series with abysmal IPC.
tutfbhuf 3y ago
The 6.2 GHz is just the boost frequency, the base frequency is still well below 4 GHz, at 3.2 GHz. So, your CPU can essentially go into berserk mode for a few seconds and double its frequency, but cannot maintain this frequency. This is similar to a marathon runner who can sprint intermittently.
- kllrnohj 3y ago
  The 14900K(S) has an unlimited boost duration. It'll run those clocks until your cooler can't handle it anymore, they never give up on their own. Intel added this not that long ago to differentiate the xx900k from the xx700k.
  - tutfbhuf 3y ago
    "The 14900K(S) has an unlimited boost duration." Okay, but unless you have cooling with liquid nitrogen you cannot maintain 6.2 GHz for long due to thermals in practice, hence after a short sprint it will fall back to a much lower frequency.
Night_Thastus 3y ago
Sustained or multicore clock speeds cannot really go up. But it's easier to force a single core to go up to 6Ghz for 30s or so, which is really what this is talking about.
treffer 3y ago
I was surprised too. Then I checked my ryzen laptop and .... yep, max speed 6GHz. I haven't noticed before either. But given that my laptop pulls this off at a way lower TDP makes me wonder how competitive that Intel chip is, especially as the articles title already says it has a huge power consumption.....

qwezxcrty 3y ago

Maybe never? Bram Nauta's ISSCC 2024 talk covered this and worth watching.

sapiogram 3y ago
https://youtu.be/THJP_HB5HEk?si=gmdl6vIBVREc5rpA https://youtu.be/THJP_HB5HEk?si=gmdl6vIBVREc5rpA Link for the lazy

re-thc 3y ago

A long time ago. AMD was famously first with 5ghz 10 years ago and then Intel not too long later.

zokier 3y ago
AMD got 5GHz with Raphael in 2022, Intel hit it few years earlier with Coffee Lake in 2018. (no, fx-9590 does not count)

adastra22 3y ago

Just today there was news of a 9GHz overclocking record. It was cooled with liquid helium though.

LorenDB 3y ago
IIRC 9 GHz was broken a year or so ago: https://www.pcmag.com/news/intels-core-i9-13900k-processor-gets-overclocked-to-9ghz https://www.pcmag.com/news/intels-core-i9-13900k-processor-g...

ls612 3y ago

Very recently: 12900K: 5.2 GHz peak 13900K: 5.8 GHz peak 14900K: 6.0 GHz peak 14900KS: 6.2 GHz peak

hulitu 3y ago
For how many milliseconds ?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- automatic6131 3y ago
  Single core only, for a good few seconds at full whack - if you have the enthusiast-grade cooling
  - jajko 3y ago
    Which sort of defeats whole purpose for >95% of the target market - super loud machines are extremely annoying to everybody, and all non-it (and most it) folks look at them as failed engineering/pc building effort.
    - Sharlin 3y ago
      I don't think aircooling is going to do it for these – though even watercooling can become loud if stressed. I guess phase-change heat pumps are the logical next step. Peltier cooling is of course totally silent, and enthusiasts dabbled on it already back in the 90s – not sure how common it's these days outside astrophoto imaging rigs. But you can fairly easily get temperature deltas of around 100 kelvin with a Peltier heat pump. You'd still have to dissipate the heat somehow, of course.
      - kvmet 3y ago

icegreentea2 3y ago

Intel got 5GHz back in 2019 with the i9-9900XE. The X900-suffixsuffix lines have been Intel's "screw it, we need the highest single core performance" product spot for a long time, and really what that SKU can do is really not a real reflection on any other part of the product line or what is even "reasonable", just what is "possible" (barely). On the other hand, Intel did get the 12700k to 5GHz in 2021. That's an actual flagship part that actual people might actually buy for an actual purpose. When Intel ran into their 14nm woes and started actually getting pushed by AMD, Intel responded by upping their core counts (part way) to erode the AMD core count advantage, while really leaning into their single core performance advantage (which was truly a real thing in Zen1/2) by really starting to up their clock speeds.

wtallis 3y ago
> not a real reflection on any other part of the product line or what is even "reasonable", just what is "possible" (barely) As an example: to hit these speeds, Intel and AMD are pushing 1.4V into chips built on processes that work best at and below 1V. And the result isn't a stable, long-lasting chip: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39478551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39478551
- bustling-noose 3y ago
  this is also why servers and chips that run for a long long time (think servers that aren’t decommissioned for years) don’t run such high voltages and clock speeds. What I would want to know is what happens to these good binned chips when you lower their voltages and frequencies and run them at a more reasonable 3.5GHz or something for a long time. Is the price / power / performance ratio better than a server chip or is it worse ? Would love some data on that. But no one is buying these for it and server chips have different things going on for them like being able to replace the chip for years etc. still would be interesting to find out if these the best ‘quality’ chips out there
  - josephg 3y ago
    > What I would want to know is what happens to these good binned chips when you lower their voltages and frequencies and run them at a more reasonable 3.5GHz or something for a long time I'm not sure about intel chips, but amd's last couple generations of chips have an "eco mode" which underclocks the chip for you. You get about 85-100% of the performance while consuming 60% as much power. The chips probably last way longer like that too. NVidia's GPUs have similar options. 3090/4090 cards can have a totally reasonable power budget if you're happy to lose ~10% of your framerate. Arstechnica added eco mode to their benchmarks: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/ryzen-7950x3d-review-an-expensive-but-incredibly-efficient-16-core-cpu/4/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/ryzen-7950x3d-review...

throw_nbvc1234 3y ago

If you have the ability to cool the cpu then it's not a hard limit; just one that's not practical for mainstream consumers.

neogodless 3y ago

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/158178-amd-unveils-worlds-first-5ghz-cpu https://www.extremetech.com/computing/158178-amd-unveils-wor... Officially, 10-11 years ago. (This first 5Ghz CPU wasn't that impressive, and part of the reason "chasing Mhz" started to fade into irrelevance.) For modern AMD, it wasn't until 2022 that they ventured back across 5Ghz, but this time it's much more impressive. https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/23/23137217/amd-ryzen-7000-cpu-am5-motherboard-specs-details-5nm https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/23/23137217/amd-ryzen-7000-c...

unnah 3y ago
Before that, IBM POWER6 reached 5 GHz in 2008: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER6

roenxi 3y ago

People say a lot of things that are not technically true. CPU speeds will probably keep going up for years or decades. But when CPU Hz were rising, the routine was things like 4MHz -> 8MHz every other year or so. Going from 4 to 6GHz over around 10-20 years is, effectively, flat compared to the rate of change people were dealing with before the year 2000.

chx 3y ago

2010, IBM z196 was 5.2GHz, then in 2012 the zEC12 was 5.5GHz. As always, the consumer world follows with a bit of lag.

c2h5oh 3y ago

Technically AMD had CPUs boosting to 5GHz in 2013, but it was the horrible buldozer FX series with abysmal IPC.

tutfbhuf 3y ago

The 6.2 GHz is just the boost frequency, the base frequency is still well below 4 GHz, at 3.2 GHz. So, your CPU can essentially go into berserk mode for a few seconds and double its frequency, but cannot maintain this frequency. This is similar to a marathon runner who can sprint intermittently.

kllrnohj 3y ago
The 14900K(S) has an unlimited boost duration. It'll run those clocks until your cooler can't handle it anymore, they never give up on their own. Intel added this not that long ago to differentiate the xx900k from the xx700k.
- tutfbhuf 3y ago
  "The 14900K(S) has an unlimited boost duration." Okay, but unless you have cooling with liquid nitrogen you cannot maintain 6.2 GHz for long due to thermals in practice, hence after a short sprint it will fall back to a much lower frequency.

Night_Thastus 3y ago

Sustained or multicore clock speeds cannot really go up. But it's easier to force a single core to go up to 6Ghz for 30s or so, which is really what this is talking about.

treffer 3y ago

I was surprised too. Then I checked my ryzen laptop and .... yep, max speed 6GHz. I haven't noticed before either. But given that my laptop pulls this off at a way lower TDP makes me wonder how competitive that Intel chip is, especially as the articles title already says it has a huge power consumption.....