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Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by amelius on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @07:13AM (#33419611)
How is it that the number of transistors still grows exponentially, while the power use has plateaued?
Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by eru on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @07:30AM (#33419770)
Each transistor uses less power?
Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by amelius on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @09:19AM (#33420780)
Exponentially less.
Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by Swenrekcah on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @08:44AM (#33420381)
I think I can say the following.

Smaller transistors mean fewer electrons that go in and out every clock cycle, so less power per transistor.

Higher clock frequency means more cycles per second, that is more electrons spent per second thus higher power consumption.

Since clock frequency has stabilised and the total area of a chip is I think not much larger than before, it is expected to see the power consumption stabilising.

I also believe I read somewhere that one of the reasons clock frequency stoped increasing was that the power consumption became too high for the chips to handle the thermal dissipation.