Discussion Why are we stuck at 5 GHZ for almost 18 years?

[Jacob 51]

5 GHZ on a processor was a big thing in 2003 but so is till date.

Tom's Hardware overclocked a CPU to 5 GHZ in 2003 with liquid nitrogen. They set the record. (Which is broken now.)

In the latest Core i9 11900K has frequency with turbo boost of 5.3 GHZ.

So that is a big number, considering that this core i9 is the most powerful INTEL chip Rn. (Maybe I'm wrong. Correction would be appreciated).

Why aren't we increasing this number to 6 GHZ?

I understand that some games require GHZ, while some require cores.

 

[drea.drechsler]

What if processors are made bigger instead?

That's kind of what AMD did with Threadripper. Except with chiplets, of course.

The other factor is wafer economics. A bigger processor means a larger die. The larger die takes up more area of each 300mm wafer so it yields fewer die in each costly mfg. run. Since the area is larger there's much higher chance for a non-correctable defect in the die so passing yields, as a percent of total number of total marketable die on each wafer, will also drop. It just gets too expensive.

That's why chiplets proved such a boon to AMD: they're small so many are made on each wafer and can be used in multiple products so most defects mean it's just binned to a SKU lower in the value chain instead of getting tossed. And last: they can put more than one under a heatspreader to make a monster CPU package.

 

[Jacob 51]

That's kind of what AMD did with Threadripper. Except with chiplets, of course.

They increased cores but not GHZ I guess?

 

[Colif]

Newest TR so new it hasn't been officially announced yet but it seems it maxes at 64 cores, you don't need to go super fast if you have more cores to throw at a problem. Until they run out of space for extra cores, I can't see them going back to trying to go faster again.

 

[drea.drechsler]

They increased cores but not GHZ I guess?

They didn't really increase cores as there are still only 8 cores on each chiplet, the same as the chiplets in the 8 core and 16 core desktop parts. They created a package where they could fit more chiplets with a small gap between them to reduce heat transfer to adjacent chipets. Each chiplet has the same surface area limitations for transferring it's heat out to the heat spreader.

It's really interesting reading about Intel's new big / little designs for Alder Lake, with P(power) cores to do the heavy lifting and E(afficiency) cores to minimize heat buildup on their more powerful models. It's going to be a fascinating fall exploring how it works, especially the new thread director and accompanying Windows 10 scheduler to make sure the correct core is used for each processing thread.