10-14-2009, 02:27 AM
testcase wrote:
Then why have reliable chips stalled around the 3GHz speed for over a year now?
It has been a lot more than a year. The power-hungry/inefficient/leaky Pentium 4 hit 3.2 GHz in June 2003 then crept up to 3.6 GHz in October 2004 after a process shrink, and finally 3.8 GHz in November 2004.
A big part of the lack of speed increase is that they do not have to. AMD did a bit of a faceplant not being able to get their re-engineered 65 nm processors out as expected. AMD almost passed Intel because of them changing horses from the P4 to Pentium-M/Core/Core2.