On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 8:21 PM, Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote: > The point made about producing less heat with the smaller nm sounds > reasonable tho.
Less heat with the smaller nm, but only if all other things remain equal! In reality, manufacturers use additional margin within their TDP to improve the product otherwise. Perhaps they increase the clock speed somewhat. Perhaps they increase the amount of on-die cache. Perhaps they reduce the instruction pipeline. AMD, for example, has tended to maintain keep something in the market for a 125W, 95W and 65W TDPs for several years. Each year, the functionality that used to be in a 125W TDP processor shows up in a 95W TDP processor, and the latest 125W TDP processor beats the pants off of last years'. -- :wq
