Why are the GHz speeds in computers the same after such a long period of time?
In: Engineering
A lot of this has already been answered, but let me provide a bit of perspective from closer to the silicon level since I’m currently on an internship working with this issue. While clock speeds are important, they are not the only factor in computer performance. Thus, current designs aren’t focused solely on increasing clock speeds.
One of the main issues is simply heat. As we increase the rate transistors switch the power required increases exponentially and it gets difficult to cool.
A more fundamental issue is that transistors and associated wire have capacitances, or the ability to store electrical charge. This effectively slows down the rate you change your signal- as the electrons in these reservoirs counteracts any changes you make until the electrons it holds is depleted. This makes a nice sharp clock signal flatten out and slows down rise times.
Lastly, it is difficult to design good interconnects. Even if we have a really high clock speed, it’s not easy to design wires that can carry information at that clock speed. All wires have some capacitance and inductance where energy is temporarily stored in electric and magnetic fields instead of being sent down the wire. Worse still, the magnitude of this energy that is stored is frequency-dependent. This means at higher clock speeds/frequencies a lot more energy is “lost” before getting to the end. This means that the magnitude of the signal at the end is a lot less. For example, one thing you see is that at higher frequencies, signals on one wire start leaking to other wires close by- something you obviously want to avoid.
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