There must be some doubling of transistors in there, right?
Also maybe buying a 5950X at the birth of a new generation of ARM CPUs wasn’t the wisest choice.
Or maybe it is, idk.
There must be some doubling of transistors in there, right?
Also maybe buying a 5950X at the birth of a new generation of ARM CPUs wasn’t the wisest choice.
Or maybe it is, idk.
Clearly density has kept increasing, but the law refers to a rate of increase that we haven’t been able to meet. The original 386 released in 1985 had 275,000 transistors, using the slowest interpretation we would need to be at (2^18) = ~72+ Billion transistors today or (2^17) = 36+ Billion in 2019 which is close, but the chip would also need to be the size of a 386 which they aren’t.
AMD Epyc Rome is 1008 mm^2 vs a 386 at 104 mm^2. The M1 is 119 mm^2, but it’s only 16 Billion Transistors. As such it’s safe to say Mores Law is dead.
Whereas back when (thinking of early 90's) you'd upgrade every three years and be taking massive leaps forward. 10x increase in disk space (40 MB to 500 MB), or going from diskettes (~1.5 MB? I don't even remember) to CD's (650MB). We went from Wolfenstein to Half-Life in just six years (it felt longer).
From 60s to 20s every run is huge for me.
Then the next step, a new Mac Pro, would have up to 4 M1 CPU's. Sounds very sweet to me.