Re:How much better was DEC Alpha than contemporary x86?
by ajross on Sunday February 09, 2020 @10:13AM
(#22282462)
> 200 MHz to 1 GHz in about 4 years
A 33 MHz 486 to 200 MHz was about 5 years. A 8 MHz 286 was released 7 years before that, right at the start of the uptick. Before that a MOS IC was generally capped at about 5 MHz while people slowly figured out how to shrink them and developed EDA tools that allowed designed to scale quickly across processes.
Dennard scaling was a wild ride while it lasted, but it's been done for more than a decade now.
A 33 MHz 486 to 200 MHz was about 5 years. A 8 MHz 286 was released 7 years before that, right at the start of the uptick. Before that a MOS IC was generally capped at about 5 MHz while people slowly figured out how to shrink them and developed EDA tools that allowed designed to scale quickly across processes.
Dennard scaling was a wild ride while it lasted, but it's been done for more than a decade now.