I see so much of this stuff going on in ads for computers but I just don’t understand why one is better than another and why.
In: 4
The 4nm etc is (in a simplified way) a measurement of how big the transistors or “wires” are in the processor. So back at 80nm (nanometers) we’re looking at 20 times the size wires compared to the new 4nm.
So why is that good? After all, with electric service you need bigger wires to carry more power! But in a computer the benefit is two pronged. It actually takes less power, basically because there’s 20x less material to energize.
The biggest upside, though, is that they can fit more transistors. If you’ve got 1/20th the size transistors, you can fit nearly 20x as many transistors. More processing power.
It’s the same for CPUs and GPUs. A GPU is basically a CPU with a ton of tiny cores. You know you see things like 16 core processors right? Well GPUs can have thousands, they’re just a lot more limited at what they can do. A CPU can do anything, graphics cards are much more limited.
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