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IMO CPUs aren't getting any faster because we don't really need them to be much faster. Now before the flames begin, let me caveat that as "We don't really nee
by exelius 13y ago
IMO CPUs aren't getting any faster because we don't really need them to be much faster.
Now before the flames begin, let me caveat that as "We don't really need them to be much faster at single-threaded workloads." The article round-aboutly mentions this in the context of specialized CPUs, specifically GPUs: GPUs are basically hyper-concentrated thread runners. They're not very fast at running any single thread, but they have efficient shared memory and can run thousands of individual threads at once.
For larger workloads, we've gotten a lot more efficient through cloud computing. An individual CPU in the cloud is really not any faster than it was 5 years ago; but the advances made in energy efficiency (aka heat) and miniaturization mean you can fit a lot more of them in a smaller space.
While the technical hurdles to going faster are very real, I think we've built a technical infrastructure that's just not as reliant on the performance of any single piece of the system as it used to be. Therefore there is less demand for faster CPUs, when for many of the traditional "hard" computational workloads, more CPUs works almost as well and is a lot easier to scale than faster CPUs.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- exelius 13y agoI was more referring to the top of the line server CPUs (i.e. the fastest possible.) In laptops and mobile, they make a balance between power draw and CPU speed. Many of the advances in the last few years have not been on raw speed, but rather on how to draw less power. In many ways, this somewhat proves my original point: raw CPU speed is not as important in a laptop setup as portability and battery life. The products that CPUs are being used in are optimizing for battery life and heat dissipation, and using the fastest CPU available that fits within those criteria. And at the end of the day, I really don't think you'd notice the CPU speed boost without a benchmark score. Is it nice to have? Sure, why not. But I know the MacBook Pro I had in 2007 was fast enough to do whatever I wanted; anymore I only upgrade to get a better screen...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- georgeecollins 13y agoYour i7s 2.5 years apart get a ~25% improvement in benchmark ratings. A PC with an 80286 was like 4x faster than a PC with an 8088, and they were about 3 years apart (1979-> 1982 chip introductions, the computers were later for both). And not just 4 times faster in some tests, an 80286 was much faster at everything in a way any consumer could see. Only programmer is going to buy a new computer for a 25% speed increase. The pace of improvement is slowing.
- shittyanalogy 13y agoCPU power is a finite resource. To increase that resource in a usable way would certainly benefit "we".
- exelius 13y agoI agree; and we've been doing that. But the article was about "why aren't CPU's getting any faster?" CPUs aren't really getting much faster and haven't for a while; we've just got access to a lot more of them at a lower cost than ever, so the collective "we" still get the benefit of that.