William Holt, EVP and GM of Intel's Technology Manufacturing Group, has just said at a conference that its chips will become slower:
"the best pure technology improvements we can make will bring improvements in power consumption but will reduce speed."
if true, that's not just them saying they've given up on Moore's Law*, it's them admitting defeat -- rolling back 50 years of progress.
maybe they forgot why Amdahl's Law is important ("fast compute" is always more versatile than multiples of "slow compute", since fast always performs at least equally well for both serial and parallel tasks)
AMD (unfortunately) doesn't seem to be Intel's competition any more, they're mostly viewed as an anti-trust insurance policy. ARM is the threat that keeps Intel awake at night.
GLAL,
R.
* - depending on however horribly Moore's Law is being interpreted these days.
... apparently, every 18 months or so, "something" gets "better":
- 1960s: component count
- 1970s: circuit density
- 1980s: semiconductor complexity
- 1990s: circuit/device "cleverness"
- 2000s: marketing dept. takes over, revisionist history begins to co-opt the public
- 2010s: hey look! apps! shiny! shiiiiiiny! (see also: squirrel)
- ...
- 2022: Soylent Green is People!
- ...
- 2032: all restaurants are Taco Bell
- ...
- 2505: evidence demonstrates that this excellent film was actually a documentary
- ...
- 2805: W.Ww..Wwaa...Wwaalll.... WALL-E!
