End of Moore's law?

[adler-wRvlPVLobi1/31tCrMuHxg at public.gmane.org (Stephen Adler)]

The CPU I have in my motherboard on my desktop right now is the following...

model name    : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad  CPU   Q9550  @ 2.83GHz

it boasts 5665.81 Bogomips. I bought this CPU 2 years ago. As of today, 
I have no need to upgrade, or rather, I don't know what I could get in 
the same price range (~$300) which would make it worth my time to go 
through the hassle of ripping out my CPU and putting a new one in. I 
could get a Q9550S with 12Megs of cache (instead of 8), but would my 
windows pop up any faster? Maybe my virtual PC's would boot up more 
quickly, but by how much? Would the i7 really boost my performance by a 
factor of 2?

Personally, as a desktop user, I feel that Moore's law is in decline. 
We're stuck at 3GHz and I don't see how multi threading is going to 
change my desktop experience.

High Performance Computing is another thing of course, but I don't run a 
data center on my desktop... :(

On 07/11/2010 08:51 AM, Matthew Gillen wrote:
> On 7/10/2010 8:32 PM, Mark Komarinski wrote:
>    
>> On 7/10/2010 3:19 PM, Mark Woodward wrote:
>>      
>>> Any thoughts?
>>>
>>>        
>> Start off by reading what Moore's Law actually is:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law^
>>
>> Moore's law say nothing about performance.  It merely says that the
>> number of transistors that can be inexpensively put on an IC doubles
>> every 2 years.  Let's see what improvements have appeared in the last
>> few years:
>>
>> - went from a single core per CPU (hyperthreading doesn't count) to 8,
>> with 12 around the corner (and hypertheading is back in the mix now, so
>> 16-24 possible cores, depending on if you're using threads)
>> - moved memory controller and PCI-E controller into the CPU and removing
>> the northbridge
>> - went to a 32nm die from 90nm in 2002
>>
>> There's likely others, but I don't follow CPU design that closely.  But
>> to say that Moore's law is dead ignores a lot of what's been going on,
>> especially on the server side.
>>      
> I understand what you're saying, but the practical implication of the
> more 'conventional wisdom' interpretation of Moore's Law (that single
> processor speeds double) was that MBA types could mindlessly upgrade
> every couple years and get better performance.
>
> I think it's a major (and long-term) boon to computer-science related
> professions that the world is going to multi-core as a way to boost
> performance, instead of increasing single-processor speeds.  Getting a
> 24-core monster is no longer a trivial decision to make when you've got
> to boost performance.  You've got to actually plan how to utilize
> something like that.  Which is good for technologists.
>
> Matt
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