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Re:Ask HN: What is likely to improve with 10/7nm CPUs? by zamadatix on Monday July 30, 2018 @11:34AM (#17645151)
Don't smaller transistors reduce power consumption?
Re:Ask HN: What is likely to improve with 10/7nm CPUs? by choudanu4 on Monday July 30, 2018 @11:38AM (#17645183)
Yes, but for the previous few generations of transistor manufacturing, transistors' power consumption has not scaled down as well as their size. This is known as the failure of Dennard Scaling[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling

Re:Ask HN: What is likely to improve with 10/7nm CPUs? by gsnedders on Monday July 30, 2018 @11:37AM (#17645178)
Power leakage is an increasingly large problem nowadays. (Because yes, semiconductors are nowadays suffering from observable quantum effects.)
Re:Ask HN: What is likely to improve with 10/7nm CPUs? by IshKebab on Monday July 30, 2018 @11:39AM (#17645201)
Yeah but power consumption increases with something like the 4th power (heh) of frequency so there's not much you can do even with really low power transistors.
Re:Ask HN: What is likely to improve with 10/7nm CPUs? by calvinlh on Monday July 30, 2018 @12:13PM (#17645539)
According to this article on Wikipedia, it's a linear relationship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_power_dissipation

Edit: maybe this takes into account that when you increase frequency you might also have to increase the voltage to keep the processor stable, as well? But a 4th power effect seems quite extreme.

Re:Ask HN: What is likely to improve with 10/7nm CPUs? by monocasa on Monday July 30, 2018 @11:39AM (#17645203)
Yes, but just like Moore's law is on the edge of being mined out of the easy gains, so is Dennard scaling.