

Intel will have 22nm fabrication process in 2012 and 4nm technology in 2022 - Andys
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20090822094141_Intel_Outlines_Process_Technology_Roadmap.html

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noss
Don't you get some serious problem with quantum mechanical effects when you
have such thin line widths?

Is it physically possible to reach 4 nm with current computer architecture?

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hughprime
Probably. People used to talk about running into quantum mechanics at about
the current node, but that was due to tunneling across the gate oxide layer.
This is being solved with new high-k dielectric materials. There's probably a
whole lot more problems to be solved between now and 4 nm, though.

4 nm is really small. The silicon-silicon lattice spacing is 0.235 nm, so
we're really only talking about a few atomic layers. I have no idea how
they're going to build 'em that small, and I suspect that Intel's not really
sure either.

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Retric
It's hard to guess how many, how complex, and how fast 4nm cores are going to
be. However, (45nm / 4nm)^ 2 * 4mb of L3 cache ~= 500MB of L3/4? cache. Which
is just awsome.

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Andys
One outcome that is highly likely is that the processors will be highly
integrated, with the whole system on a chip: CPU, GPU, memory controller,
network/storage/pci/usb/etc controllers.

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Retric
I could see integrating crappy onboard graphics cards with a small slice of
the CPU, but integrating a full modern GPU would be hard. The issue is memory
bandwidth. A 285 GTX has 159 GB/sec of memory bandwidth and 1GB of ram. For
250$ you can get 4GB of DDR3-1600 but that's only 38GB/s. So, if you want good
preformance and low cost you need to seperate the video memory from system
memory. But, now you have two set's of memory that each need to be close to
the CPU/GPU for latency issues.

So, 2022's high quality cellphones, laptop's, and desktops are probably still
going to use CPU, RAM, GPU, VRAM. But, I can see them mixing at the low end.

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wmf
If memory demand grows slower than Moore's Law, you could put all the graphics
memory on-package to save pins.

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Retric
Cache would need to grow to something like 200x its current size to act as
graphics memory today. So the need for more graphics memory would have to be
far slower than Moore’s law for a long time for that to happen.

PS: Don't forget 3D graphics cards are still far too slow. You really can tell
the difference between images generated with 1000x the processing power of
today’s graphics card vs. 100x more powerful. Sound and 2D graphics cards
passed that threshold where people stopped noticing more processing power so
they became integrated.

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p_h
One big problem with having gates that small is the massive electron leak.
Energy flows between the gates even when their off, so the power efficiency
goes way down.

