Intel is in no rush to reach a new milestone for central processing unit development (CPU), as the company explains why there are still no 10 gigahertz (GHz) CPUs as standard consumer processors.
Intel explains that one of the biggest factors why they are still holding back on producing a 10 GHz CPU is because of the heat it produces, which usually also requires a large amount of electricity. Currently, there is no architecture efficient enough to run at such speeds without requiring a contemporary equivalent in terms of voltage or wattage.
With this in mind, CPUs are no longer getting pushed to higher frequencies unlike how the previous competition between Intel and rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) came out, where nearly two decades ago, both companies were racing to push their processors past 1GHz. This means it might take a long while before another such breakthrough is achieved in terms of CPU design.
Intel's Victoria Zhislina further stated that "The main limitation is found in the conveyor level, which is integral to superscalar structure. Functionally, every execution of a processor's instruction is divided into several steps ... These steps follow each other sequentially, and each is executed on a separate computing device." Basically, increasing the clock speeds of CPUs with the current design will result in diminishing returns and not really substantial gains for regular users.
That does, however, not mean that increasing performance beyond what is available today is not possible. There are still some ways to do it, albeit requires advanced steps in nanotechnology in which the size of the CPU has to be reduced. This is because the reduced chip size usually results in less distance for the electricity to travel, meaning the conveying of electrical information is lessened.
This is what is currently happening in the CPU market right now, where each generation of new CPUs have smaller physical components than the last, though it remains to be seen what else Intel or AMD will come up with in the near future.
