Computing has hit 'power wall'

[erek]

AMD seems to be going in the right direction with it's designs with energy efficiency in mind, so hopefully we can ride the wall a little while

WASHINGTON – As Moore’s Law runs out of steam and computing goes mobile, technologists are searching for ways to make the leap to new parallel programming frameworks that can leverage low-power multicore architectures.
The moved has been spurred by growing industry concern that today’s microprocessor computing engines have hit a “power wall”. That in turn has prompted a re-evaluation of the roadmap for high-performance computing, a reassessment that yielded a new study published by the National Research Council on the future of computing performance. The report’s bottom line is summed up in its subtitle: “Game Over or Next Level?”

(please visit the source link for more information on the report)...

Source: EETimes

[jlpktnst]

Guess we will have to optimize programs finally eh? No more brute-force everything.

[Crisler]

This has been happening for some time. CPU design is showing improvements in benchmarks but in the real world most of the newer CPUs have not ever shown the performance boost they promise. Today there are some great examples, look at the $100 Phenom II 840 and the the $1000 i7 6 core. Now there is no doubt that the i7 is a much more pwerful chip but seriously how much stuff does the VAST majority of users do that sees a significant difference in real world usage? Even more important is how much of that real world usage is worth 10 times the cost?

Raw brute force in the CPU is nearing it end and the time has come for the design to work at more effecient design over more of the same but bigger.