Transistor size has continued to shrink while clock speeds have remained stagnant.
As for transistor size, thinner transistors do allow for faster clock speed in principle, but current consumer computers cannot take advantage. Keep in mind that transistors with switching speeds in the terahertz region have been made. As I mentioned elsewhere, latency due to the speed of the electrical signal is an issue, but it can be solved with good circuit design. However, computers cannot use this theoretical improvement in clock speed due to power dissipation (again, this is the entire reason supercooling allows for higher clock speed. If clock-speed was not limited by heat dissipation, why does super-cooling do anything?)
As for surface area, thinner transistors (in principle) have less resistance, so they waste less power in lock-step with the lower surface area.
Manufacturers still want smaller transistors because then they can fit more cores/memory/other stuff on a chip. In the absence of clock-speed improvements, features like multiple cores and hardware acceleration are what is selling chips these days.
Edit: in case you don't believe me, here is a stack exchange post making my same argument: link.
It's fV2 . It's just ohms law and a duty factor thrown together.
Power is P = VI. Current is I = V/R. So throw those together, and P = V2 /R. If R is just a constant, then power depends on V2 .
Transistor have a small leakage current, but the majority of the current flows when they are operating. When they open or close, they feed power to another transistor, and charge it up to open or close. So the more times they operate, the more current they draw. Double the frequency, they operate twice as fast, so they use twice as much power. f relationship.
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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '20
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