Why are CPUs stuck at 3Ghz

[texastailspin]

I am curious why CPU manufacturers are stuck at 3Ghz?
I understand we are utilizing multi core technology, increased the bus width and better use caching to give us the added horse power but that is only useful if your OS and Application can utilize it.

 

[OvrClkr]

who is stuck @ 3Ghz?

your question is kinda confusing......

 

[overshocks]

can you rephrase your question into a better understandable question? also you are talking about stock speeds right?

 

[xaira]

we are basically stuck around the 3.0 ghz viscinity because the more ghz a cpu uses, the more heat it outputs and because air is used to coolmostof the worlds processors the heat will be too much to handle and even liquid cooling has its limits, so since they are no longer able to simply compete ghz for ghz, they must find new ways for cpus to get faster while maintaining an acceptable thermal envalope

 

[xaira]

hopefully amd will be releasing a 3.6ghz quad when they figure out how to get the 965s tdp to 125 w

 

[overshocks]

"viscinity" is not a word.
seeing how you cannot spell a simple word, it seems your whole paragraph is meaningless and untrustworthy

 

[jsc]

"viscinity" is not a word.
seeing how you cannot spell a simple word, it seems your whole paragraph is meaningless and untrustworthy

"[strike]viscinity[/strike]" "[strike]visinity[/strike]" "[strike]vicsinty[/strike]" "[strike]viscinty[/strike]""[strike]vicinty[/strike]" "vicinity" is hardly a simple word.

And I don't know for certain, but keeping in mind that this is an international website, there's a pretty good chance that [strike]Inglish[/strike] English may not be his first language.

 

[SL2W8]

"viscinity" is not a word.
seeing how you cannot spell a simple word, it seems your whole paragraph is meaningless and untrustworthy

I've been reading Tom's for more than ten years. Your ability to spell is amazing. Why waste your talent here?

 

[CompuTronix]

Proper capitalization, punctuation, spelling and grammar; so disappointingly and typically beyond the ambitions of the "text" generation.

 

[Shadow703793]

^Good to see you again man.

 

[Twoboxer]

Icandealwiththeoccasionalmisspellingbutthelackofpunctuationjustdrivesmeinsane.

 

[CompuTronix]

That's what happens when you run your manifold pressure too high, your RPM too low, and your mixture too lean.

Incidentally, nice Avatar. P51 Charlie?

 

[jitpublisher]

I personally kind of liked the Avatar in the visnicinity of 5 posts above^

 

[CompuTronix]

Verry vivasceous!

 

[OvrClkr]

lol......

this has turned into a comedy show.......

 

[Twoboxer]

That's what happens when you run your manifold pressure too high, your RPM too low, and your mixture too lean.

Incidentally, nice Avatar. P51 Charlie?

Yup. I actually got to fly it last week. I'm told its the only one left modified for 2-up. I was only allowed to touch pedals and stick

 

[CompuTronix]

You lucky bast*** ! A once-in-a-lifetime experience!

 

[Twoboxer]

AYe! I've had flying a P51 as a dream since I was a kid building them as plastic models. It was the one thing on my list that I had reconciled never to do.

Then my wife went to Wawa for coffee, saw a Flyer advertising this little air show, and the next day I drove to the airport and bought an hour.

http://www.collingsfoundation.org/menu.htm

 

[CompuTronix]

Fort Lauderdale in January. Thanks!

 

[derek2006]

I am curious why CPU manufacturers are stuck at 3Ghz?
I understand we are utilizing multi core technology, increased the bus width and better use caching to give us the added horse power but that is only useful if your OS and Application can utilize it.

I will get this back on subject.

A single transistor can switch in the Terahertz range by itself and Intel has shown this off before (google it), however the copper wires and the distances between the transistors heavily limit us. We are hitting the limit of how fast electrons can flow through copper. Even though electrons can travel near the speed of light, as they pass through materials such as copper, they hit the nuclei of the copper atoms and bounce back and forth making the distance they actually travel forward somewhat slow. With all these collisions happening it creates heat due to the friction. Heat is a measure of how much an atom is vibrating back and forth. Because the copper atoms are vibrating so much it further increases the friction making even more heat while even more-so slowing down the electrons. This is why we try to keep our processors cool so we can overclock higher. With less collisions the electrons move onwards faster which can yield a higher clock speed. Also by making processors smaller it decreases the distance between the transistors which is 1 of the many reasons we are still slightly getting faster.

Processors will not get a significant clock speed increase until we use different materials. I personally think it would be great if we could build a transistor that could switch off of light. Then we should be able to hit terahert frequencies.

I am basing this off of what I know and it is kind of my theory, I did not research this so don't crucify me if I got something wrong.

Also I wanted to say I am amazed that some of you had to ask the op to rephrase and elaborate on the question. Really, is it that hard to understand? O ya, this is rhetorical, I don't actually care to read why.

 

[knotknut]

I wonder if silver would make a noticable increase if used instead of copper in todays PC?

Edit: as a conducter

 

[uncfan_2563]

yeah i think they're messing with new materials but i honestly don't see the consumer market getting these high-tech cpus even if they happen. Intel and AMD are pretty lazy and i think they'll just stick with increasing the number of cores rather than having faster ones.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

I think we are the in viscinicsincinity of a troll.

 

[uncfan_2563]

whose the troll?

 

[xaira]

every1s a trole