- Joined
- Jul 1, 2004
With Intel scrapping the Pressler and moving over to Conroe it looks like it isn't MHz that's the priorety anymore, it's the IPC. I want some peoples input on if they think this is good or not. While I'm sure everyones kneejerk reaction is going to be "Yes, of course it's good!" I'm going to play devil's advocate, and (I DO think moving over the IPC is a good thing.) point out what's BAD about making IPC the priorety.
Firstly, with IPC being the priorety, the chips wont need to run at clockspeeds that are so high, so they'll need less power. The Pentium-Ms run near room temprature. Cool chips = Good thing.
But, there are some bad things. To improve the IPC they're going to need to add features/functions to the chip. And that's going to make the chips bigger. (This is where I start flying by the seat of my pants because I'm still hazy on the details of exactly what goes into making the CPUs. So if someone could fill in the blanks for me I'd apreciate it.) Bigger chips means fewer chips per wafer, so yeilds will matter more. This is the reason why a .8 micron Pentium and a .18 micron P4 are the EXACT SAME SIZE. Don't believe me? Go take a look at this. It's an interview with Bob Colwell, who was Intel's IA-32 Chief Architect from 1992-2000. (In fact, just watch it, it's a good vid.) And at almost the 3 minute marker in his power point presentation he shows a slide of all the CPUs that were made while he was working at Intel and how big each of them were. And despite the fact that there were shrinks in the silicon process, they were adding things to the chips, (like larger caches) so the new chips ended up the same size as the old ones they were replacing.
My point? That the chips are going to keep getting bigger, and making them is going to get more expensive. So the consumer is going to end up paying more for them.
Another problem. Their hands are both kind of tied when it comes to improving the IPC of a chip. There are probably a great number of things that you can take off other parts of the computer and cram them into the CPU directly, and speed things up. But the problem is, if Intel or AMD does that, that puts the people who are currently making that part are out of a job. And that also makes upgrades harder in the long run when an improvement can (or worse, needs to.) be made.
But these are the only things I can come up with, and I still consider them good trades in exchange for better performance, cooler chips, and better power consumption.
What do you guys think?
Firstly, with IPC being the priorety, the chips wont need to run at clockspeeds that are so high, so they'll need less power. The Pentium-Ms run near room temprature. Cool chips = Good thing.
But, there are some bad things. To improve the IPC they're going to need to add features/functions to the chip. And that's going to make the chips bigger. (This is where I start flying by the seat of my pants because I'm still hazy on the details of exactly what goes into making the CPUs. So if someone could fill in the blanks for me I'd apreciate it.) Bigger chips means fewer chips per wafer, so yeilds will matter more. This is the reason why a .8 micron Pentium and a .18 micron P4 are the EXACT SAME SIZE. Don't believe me? Go take a look at this. It's an interview with Bob Colwell, who was Intel's IA-32 Chief Architect from 1992-2000. (In fact, just watch it, it's a good vid.) And at almost the 3 minute marker in his power point presentation he shows a slide of all the CPUs that were made while he was working at Intel and how big each of them were. And despite the fact that there were shrinks in the silicon process, they were adding things to the chips, (like larger caches) so the new chips ended up the same size as the old ones they were replacing.
My point? That the chips are going to keep getting bigger, and making them is going to get more expensive. So the consumer is going to end up paying more for them.
Another problem. Their hands are both kind of tied when it comes to improving the IPC of a chip. There are probably a great number of things that you can take off other parts of the computer and cram them into the CPU directly, and speed things up. But the problem is, if Intel or AMD does that, that puts the people who are currently making that part are out of a job. And that also makes upgrades harder in the long run when an improvement can (or worse, needs to.) be made.
But these are the only things I can come up with, and I still consider them good trades in exchange for better performance, cooler chips, and better power consumption.
What do you guys think?
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