

Intel i7-4770k overclocked to 8.0 GHz - ttoti
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Haswell-Overclock-i7-4770K,22454.html

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jwfergus
I'm skeptical. I don't know the exact breakpoint, but pushing enough power
through the small (and very dense) circuits of a processor can't go beyond a
certain level based on our current CPU cooling technology. The heat at that
density just becomes too high and too localized.

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t0
Liquid nitrogen or helium. But if someone went to the trouble to use these
substances, they'd likely show it in action instead of some computer screen.

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jwfergus
Late reply, I know :( - Actually, it's not even the cooling outside the CPU
that's the real problem, it's moving heat away at a microscopic level near
each transistor. With enough power going through enough circuits nearby, the
material the CPU is made out of becomes the issue.

Consider a block of metal submerged in a (hypothetical) liquid at near 0
degrees K. Despite how much heat this liquid can draw out of the block, if
heat is being generated too quickly at the very center of the block, it's
possible that the heat conductivity of the metal block itself limits the
efficacy of outside cooling, resulting in an "overheating" center.

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kunai
I'm a bit saddened that nearly ten years after we reached 3GHz, desktop clock
speed increase has come to a halt.

I know that FSB speeds are irrelevant now more than ever with multithreading
and multi-core architectures, but the performance afforded by high-clock chips
in high-demand areas, along with multi-core technology, it seems could be far
greater than it is now.

Especially with several 8GHz nodes, it seems like cheaper supercomputing could
be more viable.

Am I wrong, right, misguided, inaccurate, incorrect?

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simonster
Clock speed hasn't increased, but instructions per second per core has more
than doubled over the last decade, and instructions per clock cycle per core
continues to increase
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second>). Slower than Moore's
law, but it's something.

