Intel Penryn

[lhuser]

Now wait til the Quad extreme kicks the living crap out of them!

 

[ownage]

Actually, smaller and faster isn't actually s hard as you;d think.

Take a 100psi water pump and has output. Take a 250psi tube. You'll see that the tube is never full and is never at full capacity. However, if you put the 100psi pump and inplant 5x 100 psi tubes, it would be around the same as the 250 tubing. So, what they've done, is that they took the 100psi pump, and used the normal tubes. So, in that means: You can have more space for more pumps rather than clutting them with big tubes.

That's around what they've done. Reduce it to the small capacity and inplant more. Smaller, and faster.

Actually, making things smaller and smaller is very difficult. Its not as easy as it sounds. You can't just program a fab to run off 300mm 45nm wafers with the click of a button. They need to transform fabs which costs millions of dollars for the equipment needed. Then they have to redesign the chip for a die shrink which isnt easy either. After that, they have to refine the fabrication process to make sure yields are average so silicon won't be going to waste

 

[TRDCorolla1]

what about using optics in CPUs? Wouldn't that make it fast? Probably cost a whole lot to implement though.

 

[alvino]

That would cost WAY too much for it to be practical for manufacturing and cost effective for consumers.

 

[TRDCorolla1]

I'll bet the military or some research centers are using this technology. It's super fast and I don't think heat will be too much of an issue either.

 

[alvino]

I doubt it, since light is used in optics, not electric signals.

 

[TRDCorolla1]

Yeah, that's the whole point though. It does increase the speed. It works well for fibe optic backbones over a network. What's confusing is, isn't laser suppose to get hot? I mean I've seen demos where you shoot a low level laser at a piece of metal, it actually melts the darn thing. Maybe for a CPU, something that small wouldn't matter. Especially if the pulses were at wider intervals.

 

[alvino]

Don't they just use lights for optical fibers? Either way, I don't see anyone using it right now. Not even the military or anything. It's simply way too expensive, and even if it's the US military they do have budgets.

 

[TRDCorolla1]

Man, imagine if that was hit mainstream in the future. We're talking Star Trek computers. Imagine the power a single CPU can harness. Too bad everything has to be about cost.

 

[alvino]

Unfortunately, but that's the way things roll.