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IBM and 45nm Chip Development

poundsmack said:
simply put, it has taken to long to get to where we are now. future road maps show chips for 10 gigz in only a few years time (sun microsystems) thats a 300% + increase. it took us much longer to get to a simple 3 or 4 gigz in retrospect.
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I thought that is what you meant - thanks for the clarification. :)

Yes, the processor industry has hit a wall. - let's hope some groundbreaking advancements are made soon so we can see +3 GHz G5s and the like very soon!
 
i am not so sure we will ever see a 3 ghz "G5" though another chip with that boast will come along soon i assume
 
poundsmack said:
i am not so sure we will ever see a 3 ghz "G5" though another chip with that boast will come along soon i assume
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Come on, Apple's only 300 MHz away from making it a reality - how much harder could it be? ;)
 
~Shard~ said:
I thought that is what you meant - thanks for the clarification. :)

Yes, the processor industry has hit a wall. - let's hope some groundbreaking advancements are made soon so we can see +3 GHz G5s and the like very soon!
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Because the CMOS power curve is peaking now at 13-14 W/cm2, power is the brick wall, but this brick wall can be torn down with more advanced materials and gate topologies. It does not mean that a wholescale paradigm shift is necessary. Some estimates I've seen suggest that *conventional* process technologies and trends can last for another 15-20 years before a real barrier is struck. I think we will see a gradual shift to whole new technologies much before 20 years expire.

Nevertheless, clock speeds are now rising at HALF the historical rate due to power issues and the relatively long time it takes to develop new materials and process technologies to deal with the sources of that heat.
 
graphyte said:
How do you know they've made prototypes? Got insider information or something?
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This was news on most the Mac web sites nearly a year ago.

At at least one media event, Jobs even said that the entire problem with making a G5 Powerbook is cooling.
 
To, Too, Two - a pet peeve

...to hard...
...to long...
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Okay, this is just a little pet peeve of mine, but I find it quite irritating (and a little difficult to read) when people write 'to' when the mean 'too'.

So there's:
too |to?| adverb

1 [as submodifier ] to a higher degree than is desirable, permissible, or possible; excessively : he was driving too fast | he wore suits that seemed a size too small for him. • informal very : you're too kind.

2 in addition; also : is he coming too? • moreover (used when adding a further point) : she is a grown woman, and a strong one too.
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And then there's
to |to?| preposition

1 expressing motion in the direction of (a particular location) : walking down to the mall | my first visit to Africa. • expressing location, typically in relation to a specified point of reference : forty miles to the south of the site | place the cursor to the left of the first word. • expressing a point reached at the end of a range or after a period of time : a drop in profits from $105 million to around $75 million | from 1938 to 1945. • (in telling the time) before (the hour specified) : it's five to ten. • approaching or reaching (a particular condition) : Christopher's expression changed from amazement to joy | she was close to tears. • expressing the result of a process or action : smashed to smithereens.

2 identifying the person or thing affected : you were terribly unkind to her. • identifying the recipient or intended recipient of something : he wrote a heart-rending letter to the parents | I am deeply grateful to my parents.

3 identifying a particular relationship between one person and another : he is married to Jan's cousin | economic adviser to the president. • in various phrases indicating how something is related to something else (often followed by a noun without a determiner) : made to order | a prelude to disaster. • indicating a rate of return on something, e.g., the distance traveled in exchange for fuel used, or an exchange rate that can be obtained in one currency for another : it only does ten miles to the gallon. • ( to the) Mathematics indicating the power (exponent) to which a number is raised : ten to the minus thirty-three.

4 indicating that two things are attached : he had left his bike chained to a fence | figurative they are inextricably linked to this island.

5 concerning or likely to concern (something, esp. something abstract) : a threat to world peace | a reference to Psalm 22:18.

6 governing a phrase expressing someone's reaction to something : to her astonishment, he smiled.

7 used to introduce the second element in a comparison : it's nothing to what it once was.

infinitive marker

1 used with the base form of a verb to indicate that the verb is in the infinitive, in particular • expressing purpose or intention : I set out to buy food | we tried to help | I am going to tell you a story. • expressing an outcome, result, or consequence : he was left to die | he managed to escape. • expressing a cause : I'm sorry to hear that. • indicating a desired or advisable action : I'd love to go to France this summer | we asked her to explain | the leaflet explains how to start a recycling program. • indicating a proposition that is known, believed, or reported about a specified person or thing : a house that people believed to be haunted. • ( about to) forming a future tense with reference to the immediate future : he was about to sing. • after a noun, indicating its function or purpose : a chair to sit on | something to eat. • after a phrase containing an ordinal number : the first person to arrive.

2 used without a verb following when the missing verb is clearly understood : he asked her to come but she said she didn't want to.
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(with special thanks to the new dictionary program in Tiger);)
 
quick question, once the 999ghz barrier is broken, what comes after GHZ, we had MHZ, then GHZ, I forget what is next.
 
stubeeef said:
quick question, once the 999ghz barrier is broken, what comes after GHZ, we had MHZ, then GHZ, I forget what is next.
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Just like disk space and memory. After kilobytes came megabytes, then gigabytes, now terabytes. So it will go with clock speeds. KHz, MHz, GHz, then THz.
 
The industry has hit a wall?

What do you mean when you say the industry has hit a wall? Do you mean we have reached that point where you can't go further in chip manufacturing? :confused:
:eek:
Maybe:
a) Apple has got 3 Ghz G5 chips, and they are waiting for WWDC... (or all-new PowerBooks G5 nest Tuesday™ ?) :D

b) It is imposible to make them... and we'll have to wait till Apple decides to implement new processors... :mad:

Anyway, off-topic: a new slogan for marketing Tiger just came to my mind: "Where's the beef?"
:p ;) :rolleyes:
 
Snowy_River said:
Okay, this is just a little pet peeve of mine, but I find it quite irritating (and a little difficult to read) when people write 'to' when the mean 'too'.
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Are you an English Professor? English was one of my hardest subjects next to math.
 
graphyte said:
b) It is imposible to make them... and we'll have to wait till Apple decides to implement new processors... :mad:

Anyway, off-topic: a new slogan for marketing Tiger just came to my mind: "Where's the beef?"
:p ;) :rolleyes:
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yes "b" is almost 100% certian to be the case

and about the beef....watch the cattle industry lawsuites pour in after that one hahaha
 
graphyte said:
What do you mean when you say the industry has hit a wall? Do you mean we have reached that point where you can't go further in chip manufacturing? :confused:
:eek:
Maybe:
a) Apple has got 3 Ghz G5 chips, and they are waiting for WWDC... (or all-new PowerBooks G5 nest Tuesday™ ?) :D

b) It is imposible to make them... and we'll have to wait till Apple decides to implement new processors... :mad:

Anyway, off-topic: a new slogan for marketing Tiger just came to my mind: "Where's the beef?"
:p ;) :rolleyes:
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Well I think it is B, Apple waited 10 months just so it could increase the speed by 200MHZ? I think we won't see a 3Ghz processor from a Power4 derivative (aka 970 series).

I wonder what will be the relationship between the next generation of Mac processor (i'll call it 9xx) with the CELL design. Are they gonna be related, are they gonna share same concepts but different implementations? And where is the Power5 derivative in all of this?
 
Snowy_River said:
Just like disk space and memory. After kilobytes came megabytes, then gigabytes, now terabytes. So it will go with clock speeds. KHz, MHz, GHz, then THz.
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I can give you on a note we will never see THz. Light travels a meager 10cm per clockcycle at 3GHz. The resistance of the wires is about 1/3 the speed of that so that's 6.7 cm for the signal to travel. Also, with every step to a smaller scale that resistance of the wire increases with a certain factor. Shortening of that same wire helps to resolve that issue for most transistor wires but with increased complexity of a next-generation chip the total area of it stays constant and the distance between the various functional blocks and writing to the cache will stay constant. Lot's of repeaters will have to be build in with loss of many clockcycles as a result. In practice, from about 3 GHz you will start to loose clockcycles which can even lead to diminishing performance if your cpu has to skip one or even two cycles to acces it's memory or a different block.
 
Tachions

minimax said:
I can give you on a note we will never see THz. Light travels a meager 10cm per clockcycle at 3GHz. The resistance of the wires is about 1/3 the speed of that so that's 6.7 cm for the signal to travel. Also, with every step to a smaller scale that resistance of the wire increases with a certain factor. Shortening of that same wire helps to resolve that issue for most transistor wires but with increased complexity of a next-generation chip the total area of it stays constant and the distance between the various functional blocks and writing to the cache will stay constant. Lot's of repeaters will have to be build in with loss of many clockcycles as a result. In practice, from about 3 GHz you will start to loose clockcycles which can even lead to diminishing performance if your cpu has to skip one or even two cycles to acces it's memory or a different block.
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Not for tachions!
 
minimax said:
what's a tachion?
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He meant Tachyon. A Tachyon, if I remember correctly, is a theoretical particle that travels at velocities faster than the speed of light. Although never proven to exist, it almost "needs" to exist to satisfy certain aspects of physics. It is involved with String Theory and Special Relativity I believe... haven't delved deep into that stuff for a couple years now...
 
~Shard~ said:
He meant Tachyon. A Tachyon, if I remember correctly, is a theoretical particle that travels at velocities faster than the speed of light. Although never proven to exist, it almost "needs" to exist to satisfy certain aspects of physics. It is involved with String Theory and Special Relativity I believe... haven't delved deep into that stuff for a couple years now...
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HAHA ok :D :rolleyes:
 
wdlove said:
Are you an English Professor? English was one of my hardest subjects next to math.
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Actually, I'm a physics teacher. But I come from a family of English majors (both of my parents and my sister), and I've often been told that I can out-English major many English majors.

:D
 
~Shard~ said:
He meant Tachyon. A Tachyon, if I remember correctly, is a theoretical particle that travels at velocities faster than the speed of light. Although never proven to exist, it almost "needs" to exist to satisfy certain aspects of physics. It is involved with String Theory and Special Relativity I believe... haven't delved deep into that stuff for a couple years now...
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Well, it doesn't need to exist. In fact, it's simply a matter of the fact that there is nothing in our current models that prohibit it. Of course, there is the problem of how we could possibly detect them, as they couldn't interact with normal sub-light matter.
 
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