Preexisting and Continuing Trends
It's something of a cliché to say that to truly see where you are going, you need to look back at where you've been. However, it also happens to be very true in this case. If you take a look at Figure 18-1, you'll get a sense of one of the reasons why we chose to go to a new architectural design for the next generation of microprocessors.
Figure 18-1. Microprocessor Performance Growth
Where Have the Speed Gains Come From?
Let's talk about what Figure 18-1 really shows. This chart is actually one driver for deciding that it was time to work on parallelism rather than clock speed to gain leverage in improving performance ...
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