Dual Sandy Bridge-EP Cinebench Benchies!

[Abwx]

ou check out the lineup for If ySB-E Xeons, they already have announced a 6-core @ 60w and an 8-core @ 70w.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2187992

At 2g and 1.8g respectively...
The 8C/16T at 1.8g would barely touch a 4C/8T 2600 if it was
not for the higher number of memory channels...

 

[BlueBlazer]

I'm one of those fringe-enthusiasts who looks over at the GPU industry where they routinely cool 250W GPUs and nowadays sell stock products that go as high as 350W TDP's and I say to myself "why not CPU's too?".

Its not to say I am going to buy a 350W TDP CPU, I don't own a 250W GPU either.

But the technology exists to cool 350W TDP products, and it is not ridiculously expensive either as evidenced by the price points of those products, so there is no technological reason to not offer 300W TDP stock processors at whatever rate the market will support IMO.

The coolers for those kinds of TDP are huge (heatsinks) and loud (due to high RPM fan). AMD's current Phenom II coolers are good examples (when pushed). Standard GPU coolers (for high end gfx cards) have also the same issue (sounds like a vacumm cleaner during stress). Of course depending on user, with the quest for more computing power these "minor" issues can be ignored.

My B3 stepping QX6700 (electron guzzlers) at 4GHz used around 270-300W by my measurements, it was not the end of the world. The performance though was out of this world at the time (2006).

Every shrink iteration/generation, usually the TDP will go down. If it was a QX9650 overclocked then it would be less wattage. Comparing the QX9650 to Core i7 2600K nowadays, certainly differences comes up in the power consumption versus performance measurements.

I would hope the performance of Intel's top of the line, or AMD's, some 5yrs later is going to be out of this world. And so what if it takes a higher TDP tier to achieve that?

I hope not (higher TDP). Rather I do hope that transistor technology would evolve, such as those that do not require drive currents and just works on voltage alone (IMHO would hypothethically would be much faster, potentials effects would be almost instantaneous while currents have propogation speeds). More far fetch would be transistors that have own voltage suppy at the source/collector terminal which would eliminate the need for extra transistors and "pull-ups" as well as power supply lines (if not mistaken some minerals or crystaline materials can generate voltage on its own, happen to see that in a documentary). Another would be graphene technology (recently making news). Well, who knows...

I want AMD to launch a 250W TDP SKU for their halo FX line, at whatever clocks that gets them (5.5GHz to 6GHz by my estimates). AMD fanboys will squeal with delight, anti-AMD fanboys will scream with despair, and the market will have one more option available to choose from for their upgrade purchases.

Maybe the water cooler rumor may come true after all, if AMD does decide to launch very high TDP SKUs.

 

[Abwx]

Rather I do hope that transistor technology would evolve, such as those that do not require drive currents and just works on voltage alone

They already need no drive current as such...
The static drive current necessary to switch on a billion transistors
is no more than about 0.0015A , that is 0.0225 Watt , but it isnt
the same for dynamic drive current wich is determined solely
by parasistic capacitances that will always be inherent to any
process where there s a potential and an insulator.

Only solution is size reduction wich is unfortunately always counter balanced by more density that will multipliate the total capacitance wich is for current CPUs about a few nanofarads...

 

[BlueBlazer]

They already need no drive current as such...
The static drive current necessary to switch on a billion transistors
is no more than about 0.0015A , that is 0.0225 Watt , but it isnt
the same for dynamic drive current wich is determined solely
by parasistic capacitances that will always be inherent to any
process where there s a potential and an insulator.

Besides the wires being so close to each other, the main ones are at the transistor gates. Stray capacitance is hard to avoid. The issue is the generation of current (heat has always been the result of current).

Only solution is size reduction wich is unfortunately always counter balanced by more density that will multipliate the total capacitance wich is for current CPUs about a few nanofarads...

Also use of different material/elements and design of circuits/layers would help reduce this effect.