CPU Speed history

[Jeff2061]

Hey, I'm a technical illiterate that is just curious about the historical trend of desktop cpu speed. Has it been increasing exponentially or in logarithmic fashion in recent years? Is there an article online I can read about it? Or maybe a chart?

 

[tonyzet]

Increase of transistors almost linear
Increase of temperatures -> corvex increase of speed (it looks like logarithmic at the following article)

http://preshing.com/20120208/a-look-back-at-single-threaded-cpu-performance/

edit: I haven't read it yet and I don't vouch for its accuracy...

 

[Jeff2061]

So, my follow-up question. Will AMD CPU's single-threaded performance ever catch up to Intel's? It seems to me that Intel's single-threaded performance will eventually come close to their limit. I'm guessing if they were to push the envelope further, the costs to develop it would increase exponentially.

 

[tonyzet]

Its all about the manufactoring process. Intel research funding is probably much higher than AMD's one.

In terms of your single threaded perfomance argument, I disagree. Cpu cores are already powerful enough for the average user. The most important factor will be power consumption, portability and secutiry implementations...