C is fastest

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 03:50:20PM -0400, Darryl Moore wrote:
> Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> > 10 years ago, having more than one cpu core was for expensive servers.
> > These days a laptop has 2 or 4 cores.  It's time to get used to it.
> > The days of ever increasing clock frequencies are done.
> > 
> 
> Interesting you say that....
> 
> http://www.insidescience.org/research/computers_faster_only_for_75_more_years

Well IBM has 5GHz cpus.  Intel and AMD seems to be stuck at around 3 to
3.5GHz and have been for a number of years now.  They have just gone from
1 to 2 to 4 (and 3) cores, sometimes adding multiple threads per core
(only 2 per core so far).  Having a 2.67GHz machine capable of 8 way
computing is pretty neat.  Doesn't run firefox any faster though it seems.

Intel originally thought the P4 could be scaled to 10GHz over its
lifespan.  That didn't happen.  3.8GHz was it, and that didn't seem
very reliable.  You could probably make a 10GHz cpu right now, as long
as you were willing to liquid cool it to the extreme to dissipate 300
to 400W.  The cooling would probably require quite a bit of power too.

Or you can use all those extra transisters the current die processes have
to add more independant cores at the currently achivable clock speeds,
which seems to be what everyone has decided makes sense to do.  Too bad
the sequential one thing at a time programs people have been writing
for years and years don't benefit directly from that.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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