Mark Knecht wrote: > > > On Tue, Jun 4, 2024 at 2:24 PM Mark Knecht <markkne...@gmail.com > <mailto:markkne...@gmail.com>> wrote: > > > > > > > > On Tue, Jun 4, 2024 at 2:04 PM Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com > <mailto:rdalek1...@gmail.com>> wrote: > > <SNIP> > > > Well, there is a lot to be said about moving what used to be > external to internal. It does result in faster moves for pretty much > everything. Moving data from one side of a chip to another is faster > than moving data out of a chip and then back in again. I bet there is > millions of transistors on a CPU chip nowadays. I need to google that > Threadripper CPU. 64 cores in the top model I think. I bet it has a > ton of transistors in it. > > > > > > > Nah, think billions. I designed chips with millions of transistors > in the early 1980's... > > > > I see I was wrong. According to Wikipedia we are now at over 2 > trillion transistors for a processor and 5 trillion transistors for a > memory. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count > > Keep in mind that if even 1 out of 2 trillion transistors doesn't work > the processor could be completely dead or have bugs that are very hard > to discover. > > That's life in the world of semiconductors...
Holy crap. That is amazing. As you say, just one out of all of them and it is a bad chip, whether it is buggy or just plain dead. I was expecting more like close to or into the billions. I was not expecting that. Can you imagine if a chip had to be made with discrete components, as in discrete transistors not a chip? A motherboard would likely need to be measured in yards instead of inches. Even that would be putting things as close together as they will fit. That's a LOT of transistors. Talk about a bulk discount. ROFL I checked out your link. I knew the "process" as they call it was getting smaller but it is smaller than I thought. They to the point where they almost don't exist. I started a thread maybe a decade ago about where computers were going next. Even then, clock frequency was getting close to the limit. At some point, a high frequency just can't go down a motherboard and all its traces. It seems to combat that problem, they are putting as much of the fast stuff as they can on the CPU die which can handle the higher frequencies. It kinda makes sense really. I still wonder if one day, we buy a board with a chip, memory slots and then a couple ports for video, data storage and user inputs. That's it. In a way, it's not far from that now. Dang!! Dale :-) :-)
