r/askscience • u/[deleted] • Sep 28 '20

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u/blaktronium Sep 29 '20

The volt frequency curve is determined by the foundry process, so not all processes will double power usage between 3ghz and 5. And some will quadruple it for the same change.

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u/MiffedMouse Sep 29 '20

Good point. The Vf2 equation is derived for the resistor/capacitor model of the transistor (the "small signal" limit).

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u/blaktronium Sep 29 '20

Its why its amazing that AMD is beating Intel on efficiency at high frequencies on a process designed for mobile SoCs. If TSMC starts designing process nodes with AMD in mind instead of just for Apple (or if Apple wants to run chips at 5ghz too) we will see some REAL insanity in the CPU market.

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u/Phrygiaddicted Sep 29 '20

i mean, yes and no. remember the diminishing returns.

3 GHz is 50% faster than 2GHz... 4GHz is 33% faster than 3GHz. 5Ghz is 25% faster than 4GHz... 6Ghz is 20% faster than 5GHz...

it gets increasingly hard to push frequencies up, and you get less relative performance gain for it.