Hay. Wondering about P2 style.

[nickodemos]

Hay thx for the advice about mb in the previous question.

OK. Seems odd I know but the question I was wondering about is the P2
slot style. Was it a bad design? Cost to much?

I was only wondering because it would seem that with the way video
cards are made now days with fans encasing the board this would be a
good way to go with cpu's. Put them back on cards.

Oh and another question about CPU style. Why not just double the size
of a cpu to get more performance instead of trying to make them all
the size of a postage stamp. Any reason why a cpu die can't get a
little bigger?

Nickodemos

 

[Dave]

Hay thx for the advice about mb in the previous question.

OK. Seems odd I know but the question I was wondering about is the P2
slot style. Was it a bad design? Cost to much?

Just doubled the number of mechanical connections. Every mechanical
connection degrades signal quality, slightly. When you are dealing with a
CPU, the signal level is pretty low to begin with. So as frequency goes up,
you need to reduce the number of mechanical connections, and also shorten
(as much as possible) bus length. Getting rid of the card and having the
CPU mounted directly to the motherboard accomplished both goals.

I was only wondering because it would seem that with the way video
cards are made now days with fans encasing the board this would be a
good way to go with cpu's. Put them back on cards.

I agree with you, if the future was going to be more of the status quo. But
the GPU (main chip of a video card) will soon replace the CPU, making the
CPU (as we NOW know it) obsolete. You can think of this in a couple of
ways. Either the video card will be gone, or the CPU will be gone,
depending on how you think about it. Either way, it means more available
real estate on the motherboard.

As the GPU is going to replace the CPU, now you know why AMD bought ATI,
which left a lot of people scratching their heads, at the time. But it
makes perfect sense when you understand the days of the CPU are numbered.
AMD needed ATI to survive. Intel is going to be in trouble though, unless
they buy nvidia, OR start producing some really good high-end GPUs.

Oh and another question about CPU style. Why not just double the size
of a cpu to get more performance instead of trying to make them all
the size of a postage stamp. Any reason why a cpu die can't get a
little bigger?

Same exact reason that airline seats keep getting smaller. If you squeeze
more bodies onto an airliner, you get more paying customers per trip, which
equals higher profit. CPUs (or GPUs, or any other chips) aren't produced
one at a time. They are fabbed a whole sheet at a time (kind of like a pan
of brownies). The cost of each single sheet is fixed, so you increase
profits if you can get more CPUs out of each sheet. -Dave

 

[Paul]

Hay thx for the advice about mb in the previous question.

OK. Seems odd I know but the question I was wondering about is the P2
slot style. Was it a bad design? Cost to much?

I was only wondering because it would seem that with the way video
cards are made now days with fans encasing the board this would be a
good way to go with cpu's. Put them back on cards.

Oh and another question about CPU style. Why not just double the size
of a cpu to get more performance instead of trying to make them all
the size of a postage stamp. Any reason why a cpu die can't get a
little bigger?

Nickodemos

Asrock can provide us with an example. The AM2CPU adapter
board, which fit a certain adapter slot they provided
on some of their motherboards.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/spec/AM2CPU Board.asp

The processor faces away from the other PCI Express or PCI
slots. The heatsink assembly, which can be quite heavy and
have a large dimension for the fan, fits "sideways" and
this isn't the best for this kind of mounting concept.
The old processors for slot1 were about 35W, while modern
processors can range up to about 130W or so. A good cooler can be quite
heavy - imagine if the PC gets kicked, with a large
mass on a wiggly vertical PCB. Some solder joints could
get cracked. (You'll notice the cooler they used here, is
actually pretty small. It probably couldn't cool a 130W
processor adequately.)

http://www.ocinside.de/assets/mainboard/asrock_am2cpu_board_5_big.jpg

The Asrock module includes room for RAM DIMMs on the module
as well as the processor socket. And that is because the
memory controller happens to be on the processor, so the
memory has to be mounted on the module with it. You wouldn't
easily be able to route 144 data plus control, through a slot
connector, in addition to the Hypertransport that Asrock
did put on the connector. (You could, but the connector
might be expensive.)

That is a pretty extreme example, but it illustrates
what the concept would look like.

Paul

 

[david]

Oh and another question about CPU style. Why not just double the size of
a cpu to get more performance instead of trying to make them all the
size of a postage stamp. Any reason why a cpu die can't get a little
bigger?

The bigger the CPU die, the more likely there will be defects in it when
it is fabricated. As Dave pointed out, there are hundreds of dies on
each wafer as it is fabricated. If all of them are bad but one, that is
one expensive CPU.

 

[nickodemos]

OK. Thx the three of you. Between the three you answered my questions.
Just seemed liked a possible way for simplifying a design.

But to go farther I need to follow up on the answer Dave gave me.

But the GPU (main chip of a video card) will soon replace the CPU, making the
CPU (as we NOW know it) obsolete. You can think of this in a couple of
ways. Either the video card will be gone, or the CPU will be gone,
depending on how you think about it. Either way, it means more available
real estate on the motherboard.

From this statement I take it that soon the CPU is going to have all
the encoding that the graphics card now have? It will be doing all the
math and rendering so that there will be no need for a separate GPU?
I suppose that does make sense since you will have spare cores to work
with. Would this actually make things faster for the rendering?

Nickodemos

 

[david]

OK. Thx the three of you. Between the three you answered my questions.
Just seemed liked a possible way for simplifying a design.

But to go farther I need to follow up on the answer Dave gave me.



From this statement I take it that soon the CPU is going to have all the
encoding that the graphics card now have? It will be doing all the math
and rendering so that there will be no need for a separate GPU? I
suppose that does make sense since you will have spare cores to work
with. Would this actually make things faster for the rendering?

Nickodemos

A different way to look at it would be that the GPU will have all the
data processing and control functions of the CPU.