Processors are tiny bits of silicon the size of a fingernail that do the grunt work inside your machine.
First came the single, then the dual-core and now Intel and AMD are promising four processors on a chip.
They sparkle like gems and are easily worth as much to mankind: the copper coloured disks of silicon form which the chips are cut are the platters that modern life is built on. Processors are tiny bits of silicon the size of a fingernail that do the grunt work inside your machine.
First came the single, then the dual-core and now Intel and AMD are promising four processors on a chip.
They sparkle like gems and are easily worth as much to mankind: the copper coloured disks of silicon form which the chips are cut are the platters that modern life is built on.
First came the single, then the dual-core and now Intel and AMD are promising four processors on a chip.
They sparkle like gems and are easily worth as much to mankind: the copper coloured disks of silicon form which the chips are cut are the platters that modern life is built on. Processors are tiny bits of silicon the size of a fingernail that do the grunt work inside your machine.
First came the single, then the dual-core and now Intel and AMD are promising four processors on a chip.
They sparkle like gems and are easily worth as much to mankind: the copper coloured disks of silicon form which the chips are cut are the platters that modern life is built on.
Each little square on these wafers as they are known is a fully-blown processor chip and these small chunks of silicon have changed how we live our lives.
We are not just talking personal computers here: think power stations, cars, television, hospitals and anything and everything is run by bits of silicon.
The first ever microprocessor drove a rudimentary calculating machine but since then, the technology has grown and the chips have got smaller.
Running hot
The problem has always been the hunt for performance. Chips need more and more power to keep up with the latest application and operating system developments and it is playing catch-up that causes the headaches. The faster a chip runs the hotter it gets, so the aim is to make a chip more powerful so it can run more slowly and therefore cooler. But that makes the chip bigger.
So you need to grow its performance but not its size - and that's a difficult trade off.
We are now at the stage where shrinking the core of the chip, the part of the chip that does the thinking, is getting less efficient.
"It takes an extraordinary amount of electrical power to eke out even a small increase in the performance of a single core," said Justin Rattner, chief technical officer at Intel. "So as power has become the predominant concern, we've had to step back and rethink this.
"A much more energy efficient strategy is to limit the individual core power, or even reduce it, and increase the number of cores.
"The challenge is the software required to use those large numbers of cores, which is a problem we're facing."
We are not just talking personal computers here: think power stations, cars, television, hospitals and anything and everything is run by bits of silicon.
The first ever microprocessor drove a rudimentary calculating machine but since then, the technology has grown and the chips have got smaller.
Running hot
The problem has always been the hunt for performance. Chips need more and more power to keep up with the latest application and operating system developments and it is playing catch-up that causes the headaches. The faster a chip runs the hotter it gets, so the aim is to make a chip more powerful so it can run more slowly and therefore cooler. But that makes the chip bigger.
So you need to grow its performance but not its size - and that's a difficult trade off.
We are now at the stage where shrinking the core of the chip, the part of the chip that does the thinking, is getting less efficient.
"It takes an extraordinary amount of electrical power to eke out even a small increase in the performance of a single core," said Justin Rattner, chief technical officer at Intel. "So as power has become the predominant concern, we've had to step back and rethink this.
"A much more energy efficient strategy is to limit the individual core power, or even reduce it, and increase the number of cores.
"The challenge is the software required to use those large numbers of cores, which is a problem we're facing."
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