There are lots of reasons that the newer chips are becoming smaller and now getting to 0.13m. AMD went to the Athlon XP because at any speed past 1.4GHz more than a stock heatsink would be needed. At minimum a good £40 heatsink would have been needed, this would make it to expensive to make because the big computer companies wouldn't spend an extra £40 on a heatsink while trying to sell their cheap PC's. So they reduce to a smaller core. It does the same work at less temp. The actual physical size of the chips is reducing because if you double the size of a 1.4Ghz you will double the heat output and therefore need a more expensive heatsink, which will mean no one will wnat to buy it. I have no doubt that the old athlon could have got doubled , even tripled in speed. This shows that it is heat that is the problem not technology. So when people get oven there fear of watercooling, it will become standard. Then Intel and AMD don't have to focus on the size of core and can give us stupidly fast computers.
To prove this the next Intel chip is supposed to get up to 5GHz. Within 1.5 years.(SWEET).
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