Anyone else think that CPU manufacturers should focus more on speed than si

[togerland]

I personally do not care how much power it consumes and it is usually only a few watts difference. I rather them focus on instead of trying to make the CPU smaller instead keep it the same size and focus on making it faster..... What do you guys think?

[Hum]

Focus on spelling -- than :laugh:

And we have enuff Speed.

[Guest]

High power consumption usually means hotter temps too, it's beneficial to keep power down to a minimum on that aspect alone.

[AJerman]

Right, they go hand in hand. Smaller fab processes means less power, means less heat, means more speed possible. It's not like they've stopped getting faster.

[majortom1981]

Making the cpu smaller does increase speed. One example is the xbox 360 cpu. When they shrank the size of the cpu it actually made it faster. They had to artificially limit the cpus to make them the same speed as the older 360's so everything was compatible.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

CPUs have been more than fast enough for most use cases since the introduction of the Core2Duo back in 2006 at latest. I don't mind slight speed increases, sure; but I'd rather Intel and AMD keep focusing on making their CPUs use less power. Remember the insane power usage of the Pentium 4 class CPUs? We really don't need to go back there.

[Wakers]

There's no need to focus on speed any more. Even the i3s are more than fast enough to cope with anything pretty much that you won't ever max out a single core - gameplay wise this certainly holds true. You can have a pretty cheap and relatively poor processor in there that won't bottleneck the system.

[Phouchg]

No.

[DrakeN2k]

Also power reduction for exsteding battery due to all these mobile devices coming out.

[Crisp]

I think we need more cores, 9000 should be the mininumunumunum imo.

[Guest]

Also, on top of this, even a fairly slow cpu with an SSD added to it will benefit greatly in terms of speed. Do you have one? If you don't, get one and stop complaining about processor speeds :p

[giantpotato]

Also, if they didn't reduce the size you would need a lager piece of silicone to get the same number of transistors on a die, which would increase the cost.

[Kelxin]

I personally do not care how much power it consumes and it is usually only a few watts difference. I rather them focus on instead of trying to make the CPU smaller instead keep it the same size and focus on making it faster..... What do you guys think?

You obviously haven't installed a socket 2011 CPU then. Those things are huge compared to previous processors. The only one that I can remember that was around the same size was the original Pentium Pros.

[AJerman]

You obviously haven't installed a socket 2011 CPU then. Those things are huge compared to previous processors. The only one that I can remember that was around the same size was the original Pentium Pros.

Well, considering the number of cores they could have in them, it's not so bad. How about Slot 1 CPUs? Hahaha

[Kelxin]

The actual processor size on the slot 1 was actually tiny. They just sat on a riser card of sorts with cache on the card (hell I still have several of those in a drawer... why... I'm still not sure, lol!)

[epk]

They're improving speed, but the truth is, most tasks don't need it. So it's better if they use less power and produce less heat.

[PGHammer]

The actual processor size on the slot 1 was actually tiny. They just sat on a riser card of sorts with cache on the card (hell I still have several of those in a drawer... why... I'm still not sure, lol!)

Precisely.

The S370 merely did away with the riser card - other than the number of pins, the S370 socket was functionally no different from Socket 7.

Slot - 1 was designed deliberately to muck up AMD (since AMD had nary a right to make S1-compatible CPUs - however, they could make CPUs compatible with Socket 7).

[PGHammer]

They're improving speed, but the truth is, most tasks don't need it. So it's better if they use less power and produce less heat.

Because the one area that demands both is not the *desktop* market - it's portable computing. (Not just tablets and slates, but notebooks, Ultrabooks, and even the semi-traditional laptop.)

That is, in fact, what drove the design of Ivy Bridge - not desktops.

Look at the Ivy Bridge SKU plan - the greatest number of IB SKUs are in the mobile/portable/embedded space - and most of these are i5-S and I5-T. (Fact - there are more i5-S and I5-T SKUs planned than i3 and i7 IB SKUs planned combined.)

That means that IB is not just the CPU for *the rest of us* - it is planned to be the CPU for the *mobile/portable* rest of us.

Sensible for Intel - for two reasons. First - Atom has been a bomb; if anything, it's been an energy-hungry fizzle.

Second - portable computers are actually *replacing* desktop computers as the default computer. (Result - portable computers are needing to do desktop-computer-type tasks.)

*That* means a quad-core - and a portable one that is an energy-sipper by current standards.

[tsupersonic]

What we need is better software to take advantage of the CPU!

[AJerman]

You obviously haven't installed a socket 2011 CPU then. Those things are huge compared to previous processors. The only one that I can remember that was around the same size was the original Pentium Pros.

Out of curiosity, I pulled a few out to look. The Xeon E7 LGA1567s were even bigger than the E5 LGA2011s.

[_neutrino Veteran]

by making them smaller aren't they giving themselves the ability to make them quicker?

[Rigby]

The Pentium Pro didn't use a card, it was a huge rectangular chip.

[zeta_immersion]

and heavy :) ... you can do some damage if you were to fling one ... freesbee style :) ...

I thought about this while at the urinal .... a 3D CPU ... how do you say it would look like? well like a cube ... - no pins as they are on the mobo ...

how does the mobo look like you say ... well ... like a skewed pyramid .. however a small tweak to that would be that the cube has a hollow slot inside it, and both the outer shell and inner shell would connect to mobo pins ...

yeah, I know you like that ...

[AJerman]

The Pentium Pro didn't use a card, it was a huge rectangular chip.

Remarkably similar to the above LGA1567 chip, hahaha.

[AJerman]

and heavy :) ... you can do some damage if you were to fling one ... freesbee style :) ...

I thought about this while at the urinal .... a 3D CPU ... how do you say it would look like? well like a cube ... - no pins as they are on the mobo ...

how does the mobo look like you say ... well ... like a skewed pyramid .. however a small tweak to that would be that the cube has a hollow slot inside it, and both the outer shell and inner shell would connect to mobo pins ...

yeah, I know you like that ...

Yeah, those old ceramic CPUs were heavy as hell. I remember smashing an old AMD CPU like that, hahahaha.

Again though, the Pentium Pros were so big because of the cache. Under the cap only half is CPU, the other half is cache. That's where die shrinking has helped a ridiculous amount.