Category: cpu
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End-user Pentium and SIMM prices in the 1990s
People buy a computer today because they have a problem that needs to be solved today, or in the near future. If today’s computer is good enough to solve today’s problem, then any expectation of the next generation being substantially faster is irrelevant. If a cpu manufacturer (e.g., Intel) knows that the next generation, available…
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CPU frequency not relevant to SPEC benchmark performance
Despite the end of Dennard scaling around 2005-7 computer performance, as measured by the SPEC cpu benchmarks, continues to improve. What is driving this ongoing increase in performance, given that cpu clock rates have stopped increasing? The plot below shows 9,161 results from the SPEC CPU integer benchmark, plus the fitted regression line (code+data): There…