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The same thing happened with chip frequency around the end of the 1990s. Chip frequencies stagnated (end of Dennard scaling if I remember correctly) giving the
by api 2y ago
The same thing happened with chip frequency around the end of the 1990s.
Chip frequencies stagnated (end of Dennard scaling if I remember correctly) giving the impression that single threaded performance had stagnated, but since then chip makers have used increasing data and instruction parallelism to squeeze even more apparent single threaded performance out of chips. A 3ghz chip today is usually way faster on average code than a 3ghz chip 15 years ago. They also started expanding into multiple cores and adding more cache of course.
For fab processes we should just switch to transistor density. That still wouldn't capture everything (e.g. power efficiency) but would be a lot better than not-actually-nanometers.
For performance we really don't have a good single metric anymore since all these performance hacks mean different levels of gain on different code.
- thsksbd 2y ago"For fab processes we should just switch to transistor density." Indeed May I propose transistor density divided by the (ergodic) average transistor switching power?
- antisthenes 2y ago> For fab processes we should just switch to transistor density. The marketing departments of silicon companies are saving that as their ultimate weapon.
- archgoon 2y agoNo, this is the opposite phenomenon. Chip frequencies didn't detach from the reality. However, as you point out, the performance improved regardless because frequency wasn't the only thing that could be improved. Another poster summarized what happened with transistor 'density'. New techniques were invented that 'effectively' improved performance, and the industry apparently wanted to continue to use this one number as the basic benchmark.
- Denvercoder9 2y ago> The same thing happened with chip frequency around the end of the 1990s. Not really the same thing, though. If I buy a chip that's advertised as 3.4GHz, it'll run at 3.4GHz. Maybe not all the time, but it'll achieve that speed. If I buy a chip advertised as being produced with a 3nm process, there's nothing even resembling 3nm on there.