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Comment by nielsbot | Hacker News Reader

cryogenic cooling tho?

Wouldn't solve the problem. Basically you need the integrated components to have shorter transition times. These are an inherent property of the component: speeding up the transition time basically means "replace this component with a different component that has a shorter transition time"

Overvolting the component and sending more current to any transistor tends to speed it up, though at the cost of severely more watts used.

Overclocking is often a combination of overvolting (leading to more amps), allowing you to increase clock speeds.

As they say, "the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long", or, in this case, "the transistor that runs at thrice the voltage runs for about 1.3 seconds"

Overvolting is how this is solved and works with adequate cooling.

Google propogation delay, your pipeline's length and delay of devices within that pipe determine the max frequency your circuit can run at (a very high level overview).

How is pipeline length related to max frequency?

Physical length the signal has to travel.

It’s related indirectly. A longer pipeline tends to result in shorter stages within the pipeline. (This is the whole point of pipelining.)

OK, yes there's often correlation but that's it. A longer pipeline doesn't affect max circuit frequency.

The other sibling comment regarding distance isn't true. regardless of how insane your feedbacks are. Physical placement tools have always handled this in my experience (as a chip designer for 10+ years).

There is no point of lengthening the pipeline if you don't get higher frequency from it. It would just add complexity and and a higher branch mispredict penalty.

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