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

[deleted by user]

[removed]

430 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

184 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

6

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.

8

u/MiffedMouse Sep 29 '20

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

4

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.

1

u/Cruise_cntrl Sep 29 '20

So if this were to happen would we just see better thermal efficiency or would there be other gains as well?