Processors constantly get smaller and smaller. Moore, an Executive
from Intel, gave us the most important law of computer hardware, now
called The Moore Law. It says, that every 18 months, processors
double in speed. And as we all know, in order for processors to go
faster, they must also do a few things. The space between their
transistors must shrink. That is, the measurement between the
“gates” inside a CPU must get smaller and smaller as the CPU
becomes faster. The shrinking of that space between transistors
means that the CPU will take fewer volts. A Pentium of .35u took 3.3V,
while a Pentium iii CPU at .18u takes around 1.6-1.7V. That also
means that it will give off less heat per MHz, which means we can crank
up the MHz. The typical Pentium ran anywhere from
90Mhz-200Mhz The Pentium iii @ .18u runs from 500Mhz to 733MHz
currently, but is predicted to go all the way up to 1GHz (1000MHz).
So, in
order to fulfill The Moore law, the industry must shrink the space
between transistors at a ever increasing rate. Eventually, there
will have to come a time when there is only a few atoms between
transistors, which means the transistors themselves will be only a few
atoms. What do we do then, when transistors become as small as
possible? There are many possibilities. It could be possible
to make a transistor handle more than one bit of information per clock
cycle, as they currently do. As for now, what we will do is still
far off in the future, and therefore has hardly even been thought
off. From here on in, I suggest you keep at least one eye on this
interesting subject. =)
Mirror,
Mirror on the wall, tell me who is the best CPU of them all.
Is it the Intel Itanium, or the AMD Sledgehammer? The Itanium,
is based on a new instruction set, called IA-64. Although it will
not be compatible with x86-32, which is what current x86 CPUs use, it
can emulate the x86-32 environment. As we all know, emulation is
slow. Although Intel will produce a x86 compatible version of the
Itanium, that won’t require emulation, it probably won’t live up to the
standards set forth by the other 64 bit Next Generation Processor.
That
processor, would be the AMD Sledgehammer. It will extend the x86
instruction set (which has been used since the late 1970s, with the 8088
processor from Intel) to 64 bits. Just as the 386, which first
used x86-32, was compatible with all programs meant for the x86-16 instruction
set of the 286 processor, the Sledgehammer’s x86-64 instruction set will
be backwards compatible with the x86-32 instruction set, along with the
x86-16 and x86-8 (used in the 8088).
It’s
obvious that once again, AMD has another winner of a CPU on it’s hands
with the Sledgehammer. Because it’s another extension of the x86
instruction set, it will not degrade performance of x86 applications, as
the Itanium will, with it’s emulation of the x86 environment. That
wouldn’t be all that bad for the Itanium, if most the programs at the
launch of the Itanium were made with the IA-64 instruction set.
That probably won’t happen, being the Itanium will more than likely be
the first processor to use IA-64. As it looks now folks, all I can
say, is sell your Intel Stock!
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