If this is true...

[Vexxx_2007]

Moore's Law: Transistor die sizes are cut in half every 24 months. Therefore, both the number of transistors on a chip and the speed of each transistor double every 18 (or 12 or 24) months. (Gordon Moore)

Quote from sysprog.net

If that is true, Why isn't my processor fast as all hell? And furthermore, if it's true, shouldn't old processors not deteriorate in price and overall usefulness?

Kinda makes me wonder.

[xmastree]

If that is true, Why isn't my processor fast as all hell?

It is

And furthermore, if it's true, shouldn't old processors not deteriorate in price and overall usefulness?

They do, so long as software gets more demanding.

[d_stilgar]

People are speculating how long it will go on. Some say we will reach a molecular limit in the next 50 years. I think we will be engineering on an atomic level in that time, but we will then re-increase the total chip size to fit all of our two and three atom transistors. I think we'll also see massive amounts of cores.

The other possibility is that we somehow break the 4 and 5 ghz limits that we've seen for the past 15 years or so. Sure people overclock like mad and do crazy things to cool the processor, but there is still a fundamental, physical limit that is keeping us from going faster.

xmastree is right though, software gets more demanding, and your processor is as fast as it's ever been.

[Omega]

Why isn't my processor fast as all hell?

It is. Oh dear god, it is. I've got a quad core CPU on this computer and it's beastly. The thing is that you don't realize it because as technology advances, so does software, and the software we utilize on our computers is made to take advantage of the speed. If you try and run Word '07 on a Pentium 1 166MHz... you'll be there a while. Try it on even my laptop's P4 2.4GHz and it loads almost instantly.

And furthermore, if it's true, shouldn't old processors not deteriorate in price and overall usefulness?

They only deteriorate in price due to better technology and they're only any "less" useful because current software is made to run on current hardware. There is some current software that uses so few resources that you could run it on old P1's and P2's, but for the most part, companies like to utilize the power they have.

[Drum Thumper]

Load up a copy of the original DOOM, or if you don't have that, get a copy of the old shareware game Scorched Earth and load it up on your shiny AMD 3000+ based mobo. Then realize that those games were designed to run on much much slower processors (the 286 chipset for Scorched Earth, a minimum of a 486DX based system for DOOM, iirc).

[Omega]

I play DOOM2 on my laptop when I have nothing better to do. =D

[Xpirate]

DrumThumper, I have done the same thing. I ran old games just to see how blistering fast the newer hardware is. I wrote an old drag race game that goes to fast to even get out of first gear on modern hardware.

[XcOM]

moden processors are stupidly fast now, this is why my current 1.8ghz can out peform my 2.6,

The GHz wars are well gone, now we are more concerned with going green and number of instructions per clock cycle, hence the above mentioned 1.8 chip can beat a 2.6 previous gen.

[Vexxx_2007]

Hmm... I kinda see your guys' points. But another question. In 20 years, will this particular old processor have like an exponentially larger amount of transistors and become exponentially faster?

I'm kinda confused and may be taking this the wrong way. But that's what it seemed like to me.

[XcOM]

to an extent yes,

as processors get faster that don't need to have double the transistors to work at double the speed of the last gen, its all about how them transistors work and how fast they can process an instruction.

As times go by CPU design changes and becomes more efficent and therefor needs less MHz to do a job so to speak.