Intel should be on 32nm by then...

not necessarily true. Pretty soon, we will have 1nm procs it seems. Intel may move to small dies and such first, but as was before, AMD passed them and will more than likely happen again. I hope they keep one upping each other personally. That way, I get awesome cpus for good prices :). Thanks for the info.

that change of die size of both gpu and cpu is going to be great for power consumption. Seems like someone is finally thinking about the world and its consumers rather than just trying to push out the most powerful processor no matter the power consumed.

InfDamarvelthat change of die size of both gpu and cpu is going to be great for power consumption. Seems like someone is finally thinking about the world and its consumers rather than just trying to push out the most powerful processor no matter the power consumed.

Yes we've seen that in the past years. Compare the die size of a Pentium 2 with the current ones and compare power consumption. Consumptions has been going up with every generation. A single CPU uses as much power as a whole computer several years ago. Power usage, even though they claim differently, still isn't one of the main goals, all they care about is performance and therefor sales. Just look at the G80 and R600 for example. Conroe lowered the TDP by quite a lot compared to Prescott though they simply double the cores and raise the clock to actually get a higher TDP. Kentsfield TDP is far past Prescott (80 vs 120 or something) Kentsfield TDP will be lowered in the near future, and they find a way to get it higher again by doubling the cores or something.

I see what you are saying, DanTheBanjoman. The power consumption of the high end processors doesn't really go down, in fact it tends to go up, even with continued die shrinks. This is obviously due to increasing the performance of the chips along with shrinking the die. However, the Power:Performance ratio, which is what is really important, just keeps getting better. Look at the Utra-Low Voltage processors out there today. We have a 1.33GHz Core Solo processor consuming just 5.5w. They easily out pace older processors in both performance and power usage.

WarEagleAUnot necessarily true. Pretty soon, we will have 1nm procs it seems. Intel may move to small dies and such first, but as was before, AMD passed them and will more than likely happen again. I hope they keep one upping each other personally. That way, I get awesome cpus for good prices :). Thanks for the info.

Afaik, 15/16nm is expected in 2013-2014 (note: expected, can be sooner or later).
And with Atoms being 0.1nm (and larger) 1nm seems unlikely, especially due to those Quantum tunneling effects or w/e. I'd have to ask a physicst :)