Reply to post: Re: Here's a thought - idleness can mean speed increases!

Death notice: Moore's Law. 19 April 1965 – 2 January 2018

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Here's a thought - idleness can mean speed increases!

If you have a model based upon a centralised logic unit to perform the processing then getting the code/data to the logic is the bottleneck, you can reduce the impact via CPU cache but the bottleneck remains. See https://www.techopedia.com/definition/14630/von-neumann-bottleneck

Basically Von neumann knew that his model was limited but it met the needs of cost versus productivity at the time and allowed for computers to become a useful tool. Now we find that the tricks we have used to try to get around the inherant problems with the model have caused more problems than they have solved, essentially we need to use a different model.

Your heat issue is due to putting all your logic in a small area, if it is spread out then it becomes less of a problem. Tricks like like CPU cache putting storage and logic together has performance advantages but you still hit the bottleneck when you try to get the results out. There are more but the fact that the tricks and architecture have been patented results in the same problems you see with the internal combustion engine i.e. replacing them would put the current market leaders out of business.

Ultimately we are banging our heads against a wall because the companies controlling this field have a vested interest in not allowing it to change.

As to your 4GHz and semiconductors this is nothing new, it used to be said that if you wanted switching above 4GHz then you had to use valve technology but valve tech that hasn't been incoporated into semiconductor design has mostly stood still in the past 40 years. I wonder why

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