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Should that matter for Moore's Law as it was defined, for number of transistors on a die? I thought that smaller transistors required less current to operate, s
by rm445 13y ago
Should that matter for Moore's Law as it was defined, for number of transistors on a die? I thought that smaller transistors required less current to operate, so the incentives for lowering power consumption and upping transistor count are aligned.
- brazzy 13y agoThe problem is that current required isn't going down as fast as transistor size, so more transistors now means more power and more cooling difficulties, or you have to work really hard on stuff like sleep modes.
- Daniel_Newby 13y agoSmaller size -> lower capacitance -> lower power consumption during state changes. But smaller size -> larger leakage current -> higher baseline power consumption. For several years we have been at the point where the curves cross and power consumption is minimal. The strategy going forward is to turn off parts of the chip when they are not in use, or to reallocate functional units to other tasks (a la Hyperthreading).
- wmf 13y agoDennard's Laws (which say that smaller transistors use less power) are also ending.
- kken 13y agoThis is actually the same as Moores law. Dennard was the one to define scaling law in respect to the physical properties of the transistors.