Is CPU technology topping out?

[thephew]

Hmm... That's what people have been saying every year since at least 1995 if not earlier. And you'll be saying the same thing in 2020, while finding your computer from 2012 inadequate and wondering how you ever got by with such antiquated technology.

The people that said that in 2006 (Conroe era) have been proven correct so far. What mainstream consumer app today won't run flawlessly on a Core2Duo with 2GB of RAM and XP?

I put an SSD in my old 2.2 ghz Core2Duo Dell XPS laptop, and the user experience in any app but graphically-intense games is identical to my Ivy Bridge desktop.

 

[LoneNinja]

We haven't topped out technology or performance wise, the world market has shifted to focus on power efficiency and portability. Look at the progress of ARM, we have anything but topped out. Intel is also providing more performance at lower power levels and including a more powerful IGPU at the same time, I see nothing topping out.

 

[poohbear]

The people that said that in 2006 (Conroe era) have been proven correct so far. What mainstream consumer app today won't run flawlessly on a Core2Duo with 2GB of RAM and XP?

I put an SSD in my old 2.2 ghz Core2Duo Dell XPS laptop, and the user experience in any app but graphically-intense games is identical to my Ivy Bridge desktop.

i agree with everything except XP. that is such an antiquated OS i won't touch with a 10ft pole. I really don't understand how anyone can still use it and put up with all the frustrations and bugs.

 

[thephew]

i agree with everything except XP. that is such an antiquated OS i won't touch with a 10ft pole. I really don't understand how anyone can still use it and put up with all the frustrations and bugs.

Well, I installed W7 when I swapped in the SSD, so yeah. But my point is that 2006 levels of processor performance are still perfectly adequate for most mainstream users.

What "killer app" will appear that requires Jane Doe (who spends her computer time on facebook, youtube, farmville, etc) to upgrade her Dell from 2006?

 

[exar333]

The people that said that in 2006 (Conroe era) have been proven correct so far. What mainstream consumer app today won't run flawlessly on a Core2Duo with 2GB of RAM and XP?

I put an SSD in my old 2.2 ghz Core2Duo Dell XPS laptop, and the user experience in any app but graphically-intense games is identical to my Ivy Bridge desktop.

Most applications run fine on a 1.6ghz+ single core with 2GB RAM, assuming you don't need to multi-task much, and are not buried in malware.

The big advancement is that we (as consumers) now have choices. You couldn't build a cheap VM server when all you have was single and dual-core options. You could, but it was terrible.

With 4, 6, or 8 core CPUs available on the same platforms we use everyday, you can use them in so many more ways.

Most users definitely can get by on a decent dual-core these days, but not everyone can. Also, efficiency gains are/have been amazing. Could you use your computer for 6+ hours 5 years ago and have the same power most desktops had? Definitely not. Pure clockspeed advances may not be huge, but when you think that you can get a 6-core Intel CPU for about $500 that is almost double the freq. and 3x the # of cores of a CPU from 2006 with significantly more IPC. That improvement is as good or better than what we saw the five prior years.

 

[happysmiles]

next big thing is SIZE

and efficiency

i7 @ 9watts or even crazier, fits in your phone!

homeboys be crazy but thats the aim now (and has been for awhile actually..)

 

[Fjodor2001]

Is CPU technology topping out? I mean as far as the cpu performance itself, not integrated gpu performance or other things like what Haswell is focusing on.

See the quoted original post above. Is the consensus in this thread that the answer to the question whether CPU technology is topping out is:

Yes - if we only consider raw CPU performance improvements.
No - if we also consider lower TDP, added IGP, etc.

 

[JoeyP]

Most applications run fine on a 1.6ghz+ single core with 2GB RAM, assuming you don't need to multi-task much, and are not buried in malware.

I am running a 1.7GHz with 1.5GB RAM on Win 7 and the user experience has become AWFUL. Web sites are getting heavier by the day, and switching between even just 2 applications is painful. Even resizing a simple image from my camera takes up to 5 seconds. iTunes syncing my iPod is GLACIAL. My RAM never goes above 1GB usage.

Web sites are not getting any more processor-friendly, or less CPU intensive, or smaller with respect to the amount of data they move around. Also, people are streaming to their screens and providers are pimping higher definition content.

IMHO, there is pushing and pulling between what technology provides and what people demand. Between 1 and 2 years ago, it seemed like technology was ahead of what consumers want. Now I think consumers are consuming technology faster than it can refill.

 

[Cerb]

I am running a 1.7GHz with 1.5GB RAM on Win 7 and the user experience has become AWFUL. Web sites are getting heavier by the day, and switching between even just 2 applications is painful. Even resizing a simple image from my camera takes up to 5 seconds. iTunes syncing my iPod is GLACIAL. My RAM never goes above 1GB usage.

Web sites are not getting any more processor-friendly, or less CPU intensive, or smaller with respect to the amount of data they move around. Also, people are streaming to their screens and providers are pimping higher definition content.

IMHO, there is pushing and pulling between what technology provides and what people demand. Between 1 and 2 years ago, it seemed like technology was ahead of what consumers want. Now I think consumers are consuming technology faster than it can refill.

Personally, I'd like to see browsers experiment with AOT JS compiling, rather than just JIT with hot code, and see if it can improve performance and power use outside of loopy benchmarks.

 

[soccerballtux]

I am running a 1.7GHz with 1.5GB RAM on Win 7 and the user experience has become AWFUL. Web sites are getting heavier by the day, and switching between even just 2 applications is painful. Even resizing a simple image from my camera takes up to 5 seconds. iTunes syncing my iPod is GLACIAL. My RAM never goes above 1GB usage.

Web sites are not getting any more processor-friendly, or less CPU intensive, or smaller with respect to the amount of data they move around. Also, people are streaming to their screens and providers are pimping higher definition content.

IMHO, there is pushing and pulling between what technology provides and what people demand. Between 1 and 2 years ago, it seemed like technology was ahead of what consumers want. Now I think consumers are consuming technology faster than it can refill.

ram not going above 1GB because you have swap turned on.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Dude, there is ONE thing that drove hardware innovation to where it is today. That one thing is GAMES, period.

You're definitely not an engineer who has ran any type of simulation software I see.

 

[cmdrdredd]

We still have a ways to go before we are topped out. I'm sure CPUs as we know it today will be gone and a new technology will take over.

 

[TuxDave]

I vote no.

Seeing how much stuff is going into Haswell and future products, I haven't seen a shortage of ideas... just a shortage of time.

 

[moonbogg]

You're definitely not an engineer who has ran any type of simulation software I see.

When PCs were first introduced, people wanted to play games. So you argue that games didn't accelerate the advancement of technology I take it.

http://www.wpromote.com/blog/technology/competition-is-the-fuel-of-technological-advancements/

 

[pantsaregood]

We'll top out once it becomes impossible to easily shrink process nodes.

 

[CTho9305]

One challenge is that each new process node comes with a reduced maximum voltage, so even if transistor performance goes up, you may have to run the chip at a voltage low enough that speed doesn't improve much relative to the old chip. Of course, power consumption does still improve, so you can fit more cores (or bigger cores) in the same thermal envelope.

 

[Fjodor2001]

I vote no.

Seeing how much stuff is going into Haswell and future products, I haven't seen a shortage of ideas... just a shortage of time.

Possibly not a shortage of ideas. But the OP wanted to know if the raw CPU performance has topped out (i.e. not taking lower TDP or added IGP into account). And to the answer to that question must be Yes I think. Currently we're only seeing 5-25% performance increases each year. Not much to cheer about...

 

[Fjodor2001]

We'll top out once it becomes impossible to easily shrink process nodes.

The problem is that node shrinks do no longer translate into much higher CPU performance. Simply put, they don't know what to do with the increased transistor count that node shrinks bring. So they have instead mainly been lowering the TDP, adding IGP, adding memory controller, and so on. But that does not increase the CPU performance.

They ought to be able to increase the CPU frequency with node shrinks, but for some reason we have not seen much of that lately either...

 

[lehtv]

The problem is that node shrinks do no longer translate into much higher CPU performance. Simply put, they don't know what to do with the increased transistor count that node shrinks bring.

Parallelization. When you don't know how to increase performance per core, you increase cores. Apps just need to be coded to take advantage of that. Of course there are limits to that as well, some calculations must be sequential to make sense. Still, there's a lot of room for improvement here.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

the market for high perfomance desktop stuff is getting smaller. people are more interested in low powered mobile things

 

[Fjodor2001]

Parallelization. When you don't know how to increase performance per core, you increase cores. Apps just need to be coded to take advantage of that. Of course there are limits to that as well, some calculations must be sequential to make sense. Still, there's a lot of room for improvement here.

Yes, but the core count in the mainstream CPUs has not increased for a long time either. Hopefully that will change soon though, as discussed here.

 

[futurefields]

Personally, I'd like to see browsers experiment with AOT JS compiling, rather than just JIT with hot code, and see if it can improve performance and power use outside of loopy benchmarks.

What is in it for them to improve performance on existing hardware?

They already have your money, and they need more. Why do you think pc games are so horribly optimized nowadays?

They need to figure out ways to get you to spend money.

Since raw cpu performance is no longer improving like it used too, instead of making "faster" chips they will simply make "different" chips that use different instruction sets, and then new software designed to use the new instruction set and be slow performing on the old instruction set.

Regardlessof actual performance improvements the industry is still going to neeed us to spend money, right?

This seems to be basic economics.

How do you get people to buy the new stuff if the new stuff isn't much better?

You make the existing stuff worse.

 

[ShintaiDK]

What is in it for them to improve performance on existing hardware?

They already have your money, and they need more. Why do you think pc games are so horribly optimized nowadays?

They need to figure out ways to get you to spend money.

Since raw cpu performance is no longer improving like it used too, instead of making "faster" chips they will simply make "different" chips that use different instruction sets, and then new software designed to use the new instruction set and be slow performing on the old instruction set.

Regardlessof actual performance improvements the industry is still going to neeed us to spend money, right?

This seems to be basic economics.

How do you get people to buy the new stuff if the new stuff isn't much better?

You make the existing stuff worse.

That smells of the usual conspiracy BS.

To optimize software you need both time and money. Something most software developers dont have.

"Different" instructions sets are not about making old worse. Its to both speedup, but also help the software companies in terms of time/money vs optimization.

In a perfect world all software is fine tuned in assembler for optimal performance. Reality is something else.

Same with those blindly thinking we just need more cores, because then everything automaticly gets solved in terms of multithreading.

Haswell will continue to improve IPC and push CPU performance further in the areas that matters most.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Haswell will continue to improve IPC and push CPU performance further in the areas that matters most.

Yes, but how much? Perhaps 15-20% performance increase? Then another Tick next CPU generation that improves performance by 5%? Should I get excited? :\

 

[lehtv]

Yes, but the core count in the mainstream CPUs has not increased for a long time either. Hopefully that will change soon though, as discussed here.

It hasn't increased because increases in performance per core have come relatively easily so far, and presumably designing applications in single to quad threaded code is much easier than 8-threaded, for instance.