Basic HTML version of Foils prepared 25 August 1997

Foil 10 Effect of Feature Size on Performance

From Master Set of Foils for 1997 Session of CPS615 Basic Simulation Track for Computational Science CPS615 -- Fall Semester 97. by Geoffrey C. Fox


1 f is the size of basic lines on chip and is now 0.25nm and will decrease inexorably to 100 nm in 2005-2010 time period
  • 1992 Digital alpha chip was f= 750 nm. feature size and 1.7 x 106 transistors
  • 1995 Sun UltraSparc was f= 500 nm. and 5.2 X 106 transistors
2 Roughly number of Transistors is proportional to (1/f)2
3 Speed of chip is proportional to (1/f)
  • This is no longer true as "wires" get so thin that propagation speed decreases and so clock speed levels off around 1 gigaherz
4 Figure of Merit is (1/f)3
5 Die size is also increasing like (1/f) and this enhances effect!

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