pctechguide.com

  • Home
  • Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • Glossary
  • Contact

Moore’s Law in IT Architecture

According to Moore’s Law formulated in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel), the number of transistors per integrated circuit would double every 18 months. Moore predicted that this trend would hold for the next ten years. In fact, as the graph illustrates, Intel has managed to doggedly follow this law for far longer. In 1978 the 8086 ran at 4.77MHz and had less than 30,000 transistors. By the end of the millennium the Pentium 4 had a staggering 42 million on-chip transistors and ran at 1.5GHz.

Moore's

The laws of physics limit designers from increasing the clock speed indefinitely, and although clock rates go up every year, this alone wouldn’t give the performance gains we’re used to. This is the reason why engineers are constantly looking for ways to get the processor to undertake more work in each tick of the clock. One approach is to widen the data bus and registers. Even a 4-bit processor can add together two 32-bit numbers, but this takes lots of instructions, whereas a 32-bit processor could do the task in a single instruction. Most of today’s processors have a 32-bit architecture, but 64-bit variants are on the way.

In the early days, processors could only deal with integers, or whole numbers. It was possible to write a program using simple instructions to deal with fractional numbers, but it would be slow. Virtually all processors today have instructions to handle floating point numbers directly.

To say that things happen with each tick of the clock underestimates how long it actually takes to execute an instruction. Traditionally, it took five ticks – one to load the instruction, one to decode it, one to get the data, one to execute it and one to write the result. In this case it is evident that a 100MHz processor would only be able to execute 20 million instructions per second.

Most processors now employ pipelining, which is rather like a factory production line. One stage in the pipeline is dedicated to each of the stages needed to execute an instruction, and each stage passes the instruction on to the next stage when it is finished with it. This means that at any one time, one instruction is being loaded, another is being decoded, data is being fetched for a third, a fourth is actually being executed and the result is being written for a fifth. With current technology, one instruction per clock cycle can be achieved.

Furthermore, many processors now have a superscalar architecture. This means that the circuitry for each stage of the pipeline is duplicated, so that multiple instructions can pass through in parallel. 1995’s Pentium Pro, for example, was able to execute up to five instructions per clock cycle.

  • Principles of CPU architecture – logic gates, MOSFETS and voltage
  • Basic structure of a Pentium microprocessor
  • Microprocessor Evolution
  • IA-32 (Intel Architecture 32 ) – base instruction set for 32 bit processors
  • Pentium P5 microarchitecture – superscalar and 64 bit data
  • Pentium Pro (P6) 6th generation x86 microarchitecture
  • Dual Independent Bus (DIB) – frontside and backside data bus CPU architecture
  • NetBurst – Pentium 4 7th generation x86 CPU microarchitecture
  • Intel Core – 8th generation CPU architecture
  • Moore’s Law in IT Architecture
  • Architecture Manufacturing Process
  • Copper Interconnect Architecture
  • TeraHertz Technology
  • Software Compatibility
  • IA-64 Architecture
  • Illustrated guide to high-k dielectrics and metal gate electrodes

Filed Under: CPU Architecture

Latest Articles

TeamViewer Remote Access Software

Being able to get to your computer on the road is a great benefit to many people. these days people have multiple devices like tablets, laptops and smart phones. But they would like to be able to access important files on a computer while they are away at the office or on a trip somewhere. Remote … [Read More...]

Testing the IP configuration – how to share a broadband Internet connection

After you've set up your IP configuration and restarted your PC you can use the winipcfg utility to confirm that things are working as intended as follows. The following instructions and screenshots are for a Windows 98 environment. Use the wntipcfg utility can be used in a Windows XP or other NT … [Read More...]

Using vi to Edit Text Files on A Linux Dedicated Server

A fact of life with Linux administration is that you will have to edit text files, simply because the operating system is configured using text files. Although modern versions of Linux (try Knoppix) do provide friendly graphical desktops and GUI (graphical user interface) aids for most … [Read More...]

Best Laptops for Professional Writers in 2023

If you need a new laptop as a writer, you may find yourself bewildered by all the choices. For one thing, there are so many brands to choose from. … [Read More...]

What You Need to Know About Automation with Chrome

Automation is drastically changing the way we interact with the Internet. One survey found that 76% of businesses use automation to streamline … [Read More...]

9 Steps to Take When Building a Web Scraper in Python

Web scraping is a method for collecting, organizing and analyzing information that is spread over the Internet in a disorganized way. It can … [Read More...]

8 Steps To Streamline Your Business Operations with Virtual Data Rooms

With the increased reliance on networking and cloud computing, businesses generate and store an ever-increasing amount of sensitive information. As a … [Read More...]

Advantages and disadvantages of using Perl in web programming

Web pages are designed using programming codes and a number of technologies as tools to achieve the desired objectives. An example of the above … [Read More...]

Why Cross-Chain Trading Is the Future of Crypto Investing?

The rapid growth and evolution of the cryptocurrency market have opened up exciting opportunities for investors. Within this dynamic landscape, … [Read More...]

Guides

  • Computer Communications
  • Mobile Computing
  • PC Components
  • PC Data Storage
  • PC Input-Output
  • PC Multimedia
  • Processors (CPUs)

Recent Posts

LCOS Projectors

The two microdisplay technologies that have come to dominate the front projection market: HTPS LCD displays DLP displays … [Read More...]

SIMMs

Memory chips are generally packaged into small plastic or ceramic dual inline packages (DIPs) which are themselves … [Read More...]

GNU Copyright License – PC Technology Guide – www.pctechguide.com

Version 1.2, November 2002 Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA … [Read More...]

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2023 About | Privacy | Contact Information | Wrtie For Us | Disclaimer | Copyright License | Authors