Well, instead of clock speeds, the new CPU race will focus around the number of cores on a single physical processor. Right now, we have dual-cores, but AMD and Intel are both working on quad-cores to boot. I'm sure that 8-way cores are also in the plans down the road. Clock speeds will increase marginally, but after the number of cores per physical processor package, the size of the cache is probably going to jump as well. AMD made a big jump between the Athlon 64's and the Athlon XP's by incorporating the memory controller, which traditionally is featured as part of the northbridge chipset, onto the CPU die itself. I don't know if Intel is going to do the same thing eventually or not, but even if they don't, they're moving toward using the more efficient architecture of the Dothan core in the Pentium M. If they go that route, and increase the memory bus speed to the CPU, they can have a very formidable chip, and what the consumers want. Unfortunately, Intel has been going with what they want, and why they've begun loosing to AMD in the CPU race. Oh, and I deleted your other thread. One is enough.
It is already an almighty strugle to put high volumes of data throguh the 90, 60 and even 45 nm technology. And not only the conducting strip width is the problem but the actual manufacturing of the strip. A while ago, Intel have manged to produce a chip which could produce a ray of lazer light. We know how suprior data transfer via light is. Perhaps that is where the processors are going???
There's been talk of using holograms and lasers for storage, and in quantum computing, but I'm not sure if they've gotten the technology to where it's close to being marketable. However, at some point, the current processes will need a new change, and I'm not sure what will be viable at that point.
IBM is aiming for a 5GHz floor on the PPC-6 (64-bit), due out next year. That certainly wouldn't be bad for a multi-CPU rendering station.
