erik quanstrom wrote:
you motivated me to find my copy of _high speed
semiconductor devices_, s.m. sze, ed., 1990.
which motivated me to dig out the post I made elsewhere :
"Moore's law doesn't say anything about speed or power. It says
manufacturing costs will lower from technological improvements such that
the reasonably priced transistor count in an IC will double every 2 years.
And here's a pretty graph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transistor_Count_and_Moore%27s_Law_-_2008.svg
The misunderstanding makes people who say such twaddle as "Moore's Law,
the founding axiom behind Intel, that chips get exponentially faster".
If we pretend that 2 years = double speed then roughly :
The 1993 66Mhz P1 would now be running at 16.9Ghz
The 1995 200Mhz Pentium now would be 25.6Ghz
The 1997 300Mhz Pentium now would be 19.2Ghz
The 1999 500Mhz Pentium now would be 16Ghz
The 2000 1.3Ghz Pentium now would be 20Ghz
The 2002 2.2Ghz Pentium would now be 35Ghz
The 2002 3.06Ghz Pentium would be going on 48Ghz by Xmas
If you plot speed vs year for Pentiums you get two straight lines with a
change in gradient in 1999 with the introduction of the P4"
