Upcoming 32nm Intel Clarkdale CPU Hitting 4GHz

[philbar71]

i played sins of a solar empire and it looked cool at first but then i realized that it was kindve boring. not my cup of tea.

but i love X3 terran conflict.

 

[dirkpitt45]

I thought that was well when I first played it at a friends. But I picked it up anyways and have to say its grown on me a lot. I only play it on saturday mornings when I have time but its a ****uva lotta fun. Almost age of empires 3 level, which IMO is the best RTS ever, I was too young at the release of starcraft to fully enjoy it. So AOE3 became my RTS of choice, made it to the top 3 on a leader board at one point.

Is the main advantage of smaller nm cpus just less distance to travel so speeds are faster and temps are lower?

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Temps are usually higher because they subsequently fit more components onto the chips, as they have more space because of the smaller architecture.

 

[Apokalipse]

You should try playing Sins against human players. It' way more fun. You are then worrying about actual tactics all the time. And battles are more epic.

And AI players can annoying because they keep running away.

Anyway, smaller nm CPU's are usually cooler running, because there's less to produce heat.
And usually it means improved transistor designs, lower power leakage (in order to reduce the size), which improve the electrical properties anyway.

 

[Yami]

Is the main advantage of smaller nm cpus just less distance to travel so speeds are faster and temps are lower?

Well the **nm refers to the size of each transistor on the chip (for reference, the diameter of an atom ranges from about 0.1nm to 0.5 nm), so the smaller the transistor the less matter there is to resist against the electrical signal, thus producing less heat (and allowing the electricity to travel further in the same amount of time as there's less distance).
At least, that's how I understand it. I could be slightly or completely wrong

 

[S0ULphIRE]

no that's pretty much right. Also lower distances means you need a lesser current to get the same signals across, meaning lower voltages as well.

 

[Kram]

Well the **nm refers to the size of each transistor on the chip (for reference, the diameter of an atom ranges from about 0.1nm to 0.5 nm), so the smaller the transistor the less matter there is to resist against the electrical signal, thus producing less heat (and allowing the electricity to travel further in the same amount of time as there's less distance).
At least, that's how I understand it. I could be slightly or completely wrong

The nm is the size of the smallest transistors, many high speed or other special circuits use a bit larger. The smaller size would cut down on leakage of current per transistor(producing heat) but then there's more transistors in a smaller area possibly making it hotter. I didn't do to well on the exams in this class so I am by all means not an expert but it was fun (and crazy) to build circuits!

I swear I remember a professor saying that around 4GHz metal begins to give off RF signals or something else very very bad.

Sins is a good game but I think it suffers from the who can build a stupid amount of ships faster problem.

 

[Yami]

Ah, interesting I'm learning more every day.

I swear I remember a professor saying that around 4GHz metal begins to give off RF signals or something else very very bad.

Sounds plausible, however the signals would be incredibly weak.