I am definitely missing your point. I was originally responding to your comment that the marginal utility of doubling performance is diminishing. I don’t believe it is. I never said the marginal utility of a DMIP or whatever isn’t decreasing, which I don’t think is relevant, since processor performance increases exponentially, not linearly.
I also never said that it will be possible to keep on improving performance at the same rate forever. The rate of improvement is what is diminishing, not the value of the improvement. If we could keep on improving performance at the same rate forever, that’d be great, but we probably can’t.
Fabs are still motivated by demand from their customers and competition. If a fab stops improving, they will either be surpassed (see Intel) or consumers will see less of a reason to upgrade their hardware, and the entire market will decline. Both are bad outcomes for the fab. So fabs will continue to push the envelope as long as it is physically possible and economically feasible.
> I was originally responding to your comment that the marginal utility of doubling performance is diminishing. I
Your ambiguity in your responses is why I've been both addressing the marginal value of DMIP and marginal value of log(DMIP).
> since processor performance increases exponentially, not linearly.
It doesn't look very exponential right now. Looking at consumer-focused processors, we've gone from 176k DMIPS in a package in 2011, to 298k DMIPS in 2014, 320k DMIPS in 2016, 412k in 2018, and now we've finally got a substantive boost again to about 850k in 2021, though these are golden parts that aren't really available.
> The rate of improvement is what is diminishing, not the value of the improvement.
It's both --- the improvement is getting much more expensive, and the value is going down.
> Fabs are still motivated by demand from their customers and competition.
The vast majority of fabs have stopped being anywhere near the leading edge, because costs are too high for the benefits. At >100nm, there were about 30 manufacturers close to the leading edge; then at 45nm we had about 15 manufacturers who were close to the leading edge. Now it's Samsung, TSMC, and Intel-- 3, that's it. And even Intel is starting to question whether it's worth it versus than pooling effort together with others to amortize the massive capital costs. Most parts and applications are staying further and further from the leading edge, because the areal density benefits to cost are smaller and the tape out costs are ever higher, and because the vast majority of applications and semiconductor units do not need the performance.
Whereas 30 years ago, almost anything that could shrink, did, because of areal density benefits and because almost all applications desired improved performance.
I also never said that it will be possible to keep on improving performance at the same rate forever. The rate of improvement is what is diminishing, not the value of the improvement. If we could keep on improving performance at the same rate forever, that’d be great, but we probably can’t.
Fabs are still motivated by demand from their customers and competition. If a fab stops improving, they will either be surpassed (see Intel) or consumers will see less of a reason to upgrade their hardware, and the entire market will decline. Both are bad outcomes for the fab. So fabs will continue to push the envelope as long as it is physically possible and economically feasible.