How far can we go?

[Liquid_N2]

I have asked myself this question many a time and each time I set myself a limit they go and create it.

The question is how far can we actually go with the speed of these processors? At the moment even running at 1200mhz we need lots of fans a mamoth heatsink, pelitiers, water coolers and god knows what else.

Temperatures are starting to get rediculous. So here is the question i am posing. How far do you think it is going to be physically possible (without putting the computer inside a deep freezer) to go with the speed of processors? Is there going to be a point to a 4000? or greater, soon we will hit a limit to how fast we can go and we will see no change in performance, just price and heat. And what then??? OC Death???

I throw this into the air, lets here what everyone else thinks?

[got_yogurt]

This has been an issue that has got chip manufacturors thinking, because at the current rate, when we reach 10Gigahurts, you'd need a kryotech machine, or a Vapochill... So I dont know what there going to do, but they are looking into how to make processors make less heat.

[oc jason]

I have also thought about this-one theory mof mine that could work for a temp basis. See the increase in processors that used to use aluminum interconnects, and now use the copper ones-those processors go faster!!! I think that before they can find a way to make faster processors less heat producing, they will just upgrade the elements used in then (AGAIN) to become more products with what they have-like instead of reinventing the engine on a car just find a fuel that gets u 200 mpg ???

[Fiz]

I think we will see the speeds keep going up pretty quickly. 4 years ago nobody thought we would be seeing the speeds we now take for granted. 1.4, 1.5GHZ, a couple of years ago that was as crazy sounding as 5, 6, or even 10 sounds now. As far as cooling goes, I don't think it will be that much more exreme than what you have to use now to OC. :-)

[OpenFriday]

Fiz is right, even 6 years ago when i got my first p-75 who thought that in only 6 years time we would reach 20x that (almost) The speeds we're reaching are incredibly fast and it hurts just thinking about how fast theyre going to be in 1,3,5 years time. I do feel though that speeds will be so high that an Overclock may prove useless. I mean now if you oc a comp 400mhz your gonna notice the difference but say when we get into the 4000mhz range and we oc it 400mhz who gonna know? Unless of course overclocking evolves aswell,(what i mean is say now we get a 20% mhz increase then in 5 years we will still be getting a 20%mhz increase) Its pointless to predict how fast we will be in a fewyears time. The world of computing, for me is like a rollercoaster ride, i hope the excitement never ends.

[proze]

i'm really not sure how much further we're going to get. notice the constant die shrinks and ever decreasing units of manufacture? 0.25micrcon, 0.18microm, 0.13micron and now 0.10micron... these are all ways of trying to beat the inherent problems created in semiconductor circuits at the high speeds we're gunning for today. the way things are going moore's law might be up in a few years. personally i think parallel processing will be the first thing we see when we hit the wall with pure mhz. i don't think there'll be a huge industry shift to a different technology entirely.

openfriday.. you're missing the point if you'd stop if you had a 4000mhz chip. can you see the difference between that 800eb at stock and oc'd in most apps? i doubt it, cos the 800eb is actually pretty bloody fast for most tasks. even the 5fps extra in quake aren't noticable. sure with some overclocks you'll see a big difference, like my duron 600->1120, but we don't oc for that. well, most of us don't. with the money i've spent oc'ing this little duron i could have bought a tbird 1ghz. i do it cos i enjoy the actual overclock, not just the end results. bring on 4ghz!! i'll still overclock it.

[stool]

proze (Mar 10, 2001 02:18 a.m.):
.... well, most of us don't. with the money i've spent oc'ing this little duron i could have bought a tbird 1ghz. i do it cos i enjoy the actual overclock, not just the end results. bring on 4ghz!! i'll still overclock it.
I have to agree. Now that I've caught the bug, I've tried overclocking everything I got my hands on. At this point, an end to escalation may be in sight, but chip fabs are always coming up with new techniques, and are developing new mediums for chips, so who really knows?