SledgeHammer - 100 Million transistors.

I listened to AMDs 1st q' earnings reprot meeting, where AMDs chairmen JS the 3rd said AMD had sampeled its Sledgehammer processor a device which contains 100 Million transistors.
so I guess AMD will be overtaking Intel on moore's law as the Sledgehammer will have the highest transitstor count of all x86 processors when it ships...

he also said AMD had working single and dual Hammer systems. and that the chance AMD will ship hammer q4' are "High".

Duron will not make the shift to 130 nano meter production and will die out as the year go on...


This post is best viewed with common sense enabled<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by iib on 04/18/02 04:00 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

if things go according to moore's law then we should have a trillion transistors processor within 4.5-6 years.
the law states that transistor count will multiply evry 18 months.

This post is best viewed with common sense enabled

My bad, I didn't actually calculate it.

EDIT: Wait a second, I am right! We're not at 1 billion transistors right now! We're at approx 100 million!

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

a billion (us) is 1000 million, or 1,000,000,000 (9 zeroes) we have 100,000,000...

a trillion? 1,000,000,000,000 (12 zeroes)
T(t)=1E8*1.0393^t
... t = 239 months...

(dont forget that million and billion are bigger in the british system, 1 with 12 zeroes, and 1 with 18 zeroes respectively)

(bb || !bb) - Shakespeare

New figures


100million now
200million 18
400million 36
800million 54
1.6billion 72
3.2billion 90
6.4billion 108
12.8billion 126
25.4billion 144
50.8billion 162
101.6billion 180
203.2billion 198
406.4billion 216
812.8billion 234

and add 6 months for the ~200billion to go(1/4)

240 months which is 20 years, which makes amd_man correct DING DING DING DING!

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How many transistors does the GF4 have?

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

bool Joke = true;

if(JOKE == true){

hmmmm...

eh well the department of defense doesn't know where 1.2 trillion dollars went.

Amazing how we can't comprehend trillion. Not mocking. It is a huge number. cos a trillion transisters will melt a hole in the fabric of space and time. ;p
}

The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades.

<b>Just so you know doubling means the same as <i>multipling</i> by TWO (A * 2) ='s Doubling. So he was right just he didn't use the word you could understand. He could have made it clear he meant multipling by two however.

So that concludes the math lesson.

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Yes, but while doubling can ONLY mean x2, using the term multiplying, while also making a guess of 6 years, means that the person was incorrect(not doubling but using a higher factor).

End of discussion/logic lesson.

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The controler and large cache makes up most of those transistors, but its still the cpu die, not cheating.

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no it just means he is really bad at math

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possibly inaccurate but not necassarly wrong.

btw that smartass remark was just to fun for me and i couldn't hold myself back. Don't take it personal. Us new yorkers have a hard time holding smartass remarks back. It's like second nature.

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One thing I read is that current CPU design (silicon transistors) will hit a brick wall at a certain size/transistor count. You can only get the transistors so close together. Let's check some math here...

At .25 micron the Athlon classic had 22 million transistors and a 184 square millimeter (sm) die size, or 119,000 transistors per sm. The shrink to .18 micron dropped that die size to 105 sm, or 209,000 transistors per sm. At .18 micron the Palomino had 38 million transistors and a die size of 128 sm, or 296,000 transistors per sm. At 0.13 micron the Thoroughbred will have 38 million transistors and a die size of 80 sm, or 475,000 transistors per sm. The rule seems to be that for every 28% process shrink (.25 to .18, .18 to .13), you get about 1.6-1.75 times as many transistors per square millimeter. For the Pentium 4, it comes out to be 2 times as many transistors per square millimeter for that die shrink. Let's be generous and make that 2.5 times as many transistors per sm for every 28% die shrink, allowing for future technologies.

So, for every 28% micron shrink, you'd get thrice the transistors per area. So starting at 475,000 transistors per sm at .13, another 28% drop to .09 micron would yield 1,062,500 transistors per sm. A 28% drop to .065 micron would yield 2,656,250 transistors per sm. If we continually drop the size to size to .01 micron (7 "steps" of 28% from .13 micron), you'd get about 290,000,000 transistors per square millimeter.

With that number, a 1 trillion transistor count chip at 0.01 micron would then be 3,500 square millimeters in size!!!!!!! That's nearly an 2.3 inch by 2.3 inch die size, which really big and pretty impossible. Now, let's srink the process down to 0.005 micron you'd then have still have a 555 square millimeter die size, or 1 inch by 1 inch, which is still pretty huge.

This is interesting, and doesn't bode well for a 1 trillion transistor chip in 20 years. Of course these number's aren't perfect, but I think they're pretty good, and probably pretty accurate, if not a little too generous. In 20 years time, we probably will have abandoned silicon transistors and replaced them with chemical, DNA, or quantum computers.

But, just to show you how greatly these numbers can vary, if 2.5 time was changed to 2 times, the die size at .01 micron would be 5 inches by 5 inches (16,450 sm) and at .005 2.5 inches by 2.5 inches (4,100 sm). However, if it were 3 times instead of 2.5 times the die size at .01 micron would be 1.25 inches by 1.25 inches (1,000 sm) and at .005 micron it would be 111 square milimeters, which would work just fine.

Any thoughts, corrections, additions?

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What a party pooper! Who cares who gets to 100 million first? Please don't make this another AMD vs. Intel thread.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

Actually, nobody uses that billion anymore. There is no such thing as a milliard since billion has taken its place.

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damn I guesse this means people will need 5 case fans to cool an amd instead of 3

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im only using 1... does that mean im a social misfit?

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i dont get why americans call 1000'000'000 a billion.. its not - its one thousand million. im surprised they dont think that one hundred thousand is 1 million. i think its probably all to do with the usa obsession with being better and bigger than everyone else by lowering the value of 1billion to a thousand million lets u claim more "billionaires" higher profit ie "we made 1 billion dollars this year sounds more than a thousand million dollars" etc.. just my opinion so feel free to correct me

how do you set a laser printer to stun?

Is there a way to tell how many posts you have?

"There's no such thing as gravity, the Earth just sucks."

Perhaps we should start using scientific notation to avoid confusing our British friends?

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

well, they don't use it much... but i find sometimes in the newspapers in canada, they explicitly state, american billion, or british (not much) i just wanted to be clear... no one knows... as "holygrenade" it has been pretty much dropped... to make way for the american way...

(bb || !bb) - Shakespeare

btw you had 298 when i posted this

(bb || !bb) - Shakespeare

Thanks.

"There's no such thing as gravity, the Earth just sucks."