CPUs aren’t getting faster clock speeds and they aren’t getting more cores. How are they improving in performance?

Question

CPUs aren’t getting faster clock speeds and they aren’t getting more cores. How are they improving in performance?

In: 18

Answer 1

If you ask a 4 year old what 2 times 2 is – they might know the answer. They might be able to handle math problems using numbers between 1 and 3. They might be able to 3 math problems in 10 seconds.

If you ask a 10 year old what 5×5 is – they would know the answer. They might be able to do problems up to 12, and do 3 problems in 10 seconds.

If you ask a math genius – maybe they can multiply 3-4 digits numbers in their head in seconds.

In the old days a CPU might only be able to do math using a number that’s 4-8 digits (bits). Eventually 16 and 32 bit CPU math capabilities came about.

Today, a CPU can do math with up to 512 bits.

Doing one advanced math problem instantly can replace doing many smaller math problems instead.

The clock speed also indicates how many times a second the CPU goes through a cycle. Each cycle – a CPU might do 10 math problems, it might do 100.

So another way CPU performance increases is in the number of math Instructions Per Clock it can do.