Is AMD gonna run into trouble with higher clockspeeds?

[OneOfTheseDays]

I was wondering, since the current Athlons run so hot (some 55 C idle temps are norm) even with loud ass HSF's and AS3, how on earth can they increase the Megahertz siginifcantly without increasing temparatures significantly? I mean, the new die process actually increases heat output doesn't it, since it lowers the contact area? Does AMD have some new manufacturing process that I'm unawares off or what?

 

[BuddyAtBzboyz]

They keep refining their process. Better yeild chips with better technology. Yes the new chips run hotter. A heat spreader like the P IV would help. AMD is planning to do that from what I hear with k8 and maybe k7. Next thing they are doing to increase performance is to increase the fsb.

 

[Lithium381]

Yeah, it seems the leaps and bounds will stop for a while, till a new technology comes out, not sure why AMD run so much warmer than Intels do......they should learn from them....make smaller die sizes or something....oh well...

 

[RadioactiveMagpies]

Higher temps are here to stay for both intel and amd. No matter how small the silicon gets, the number of transistors are increasing and producing more heat.
What we need are some major advancements in passive cooling. It also has to be affordable.

 

[zephyrprime]

RadioactiveMagpies is right - heat is here to stay. We'll see a respite once they start making chips with power cutoff to chip segments on a per clock basis.

 

[Valinos]

The heat issue is definately getting more and more ridiculous every time they ramp clock speed up. Heat spreader or not, when a CPU can cook food, it is getting a little out of hand. They need a new technology or process to eliminate the heat because I don't see water-cooling or peltiers becoming feasible for the mainstream and I don't see HSFs being consistent enough soon. The next couple years need to be focused on cooling methods and reducing power consumption in chips more than ramping up clock speeds even more IMO. Next thing you know, we'll need 400W power supplies for just a basic system.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

What we need is room temp. super-conductive materials..................

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
What we need is room temp. super-conductive materials..................

Mmmm, room temperature super-conductors

 

[gnef]

or the advancement of nanotechnology...

i remember doing some research into this, and one of the prospective "ideas" was cooling a cpu using nano-sized tunnels on the backside of the silicon with LN2 running through it to cool the processor...

just a thought... heh...

-Mel

 

[unclebabar]

I may be wrong on this but, the process technology keeps shrinking (e.g. 18 nm fab to 13 nm) which enables them to lower the core voltage which lowers the total energy dissipated.

 

[imgod2u]

Ya, it lowers the total heat generated but due to the smaller die size, the heat dissipation is also harder (in the case of the t-bred). Personally, I don't think the limitation is heat. I think we are seeing the limitations of the K7 architecture to begin with. Yes with further refinements you may be able to get the core to 2.5 GHz even but beyond that......

 

[Cruze8]

Edit: In answer to unclebabar;
yes but by them cutting the die size they are also cutting the surface area to wich the heatsink must efficiently transfer the heat away from the core. Intel has tried to remedy this by adding a heatspreader to the cpu therfore increasing the surface area so that the heatsink can more effeciently transfer the heat away from the core, however amd has yet to implement a heatspreader into there cpu's, and by shrinking the die to .13u they have cut the die size down 18% which means the heatsink has less surface area to conduct the heat away from, which is why we are seeing that the new Thouroughbred Cpu's are very hard to cool despite them using lower voltages, I am glad that amd is going to heatspreaders when hammer arrives, but it still would've been nice to have seen them included on the thouroughbred (and if amd decides not to abandon the barton core) line of chips, ofcourse this is all my 2 cents.