Why are the GHz speeds in computers the same after such a long period of time?
In: Engineering
The GHz ‘speed’ is cycles per second, but that tells us nothing about how much the computer can do with each cycle. Modern computers tend to do more with each cycle, and have multiple cores running at once. So even though they don’t appear to be getting faster, they get a lot more work done in the same amount of time. Immagine a little car vs a fleet of vans; they all drive at the same speed, but the vans deliver a lot more stuff in the same time.
As for *why* the speeds haven’t increased, you can improve performance either by speeding it up, or by improving efficiency. Currently it’s easier to do the latter. Making anything go really quickly is hard; at larger scales this is generally self evident, but it still applies at smaller scales. At their heart computers rely on moving electrons about; they’re really small so they go really fast, but there’s still a limit.
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