1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,640 Have you had a look at your motherboard lately? Even though the CPU is arguably 2 00:00:04,640 --> 00:00:09,840 your PC's most important component, it still has about as much space dedicated to it 3 00:00:09,840 --> 00:00:14,200 as it did in 1993. I mean, the entire CPU package 4 00:00:14,200 --> 00:00:18,240 is only about the size of a couple postage stamps, which raises the question. 5 00:00:18,240 --> 00:00:23,120 If they wanted edge over their competitor, why don't Intel or AMD just, you know, 6 00:00:23,120 --> 00:00:27,160 make their CPUs bigger? Imagine how many cores 7 00:00:27,160 --> 00:00:31,800 and how much performance we could have if we had a CPU the size of a grilled cheese? 8 00:00:31,800 --> 00:00:35,160 Or am I missing something here? To answer, we reached out to our friends, 9 00:00:35,160 --> 00:00:40,080 Matthew Hurwitz at AMD and Ben Benson at Intel, and we'd like to thank both of them for their insights. 10 00:00:40,080 --> 00:00:44,880 One easy way to conceptualize this is thinking about how a car engine works. 11 00:00:44,880 --> 00:00:48,880 Even in a smaller car, you could theoretically throw in a high-performance 12 00:00:48,880 --> 00:00:52,040 10-cylinder engine instead of the responsible forebanger 13 00:00:52,040 --> 00:00:57,240 that carries you to your cubicle job. But obviously, a 10-cylinder engine costs a lot more 14 00:00:57,320 --> 00:01:03,400 to manufacture than an inline four. And even those CPUs are far smaller than car engines, 15 00:01:03,400 --> 00:01:06,800 adding more transistors isn't exactly cheap. 16 00:01:06,800 --> 00:01:13,320 Not to mention that if you make the chips bigger, the manufacturers get fewer CPUs per silicon wafer, 17 00:01:13,320 --> 00:01:19,040 driving up the cost of each one. Additionally, a larger die means that there's a higher chance 18 00:01:19,040 --> 00:01:24,520 of a given CPU being defective. CPU fabrication is a very complex process, 19 00:01:24,640 --> 00:01:29,160 and not every one of those slices we just showed you is going to be usable. 20 00:01:29,160 --> 00:01:32,480 In fact, a significant proportion of CPUs 21 00:01:32,480 --> 00:01:37,560 are discarded at the factory because of very small defects that can hurt performance 22 00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:43,560 or even make the chip unusable. So manufacturers don't want to add even more complexity 23 00:01:43,560 --> 00:01:47,560 that will push their yields of sellable chips down, hurting their margins. 24 00:01:47,560 --> 00:01:52,760 But even if yields were close to 100%, it still doesn't make a ton of sense for manufacturers 25 00:01:52,800 --> 00:01:56,720 to make a larger die. You see, it's actually very difficult 26 00:01:56,720 --> 00:02:00,080 to produce a large CPU with tons of cores 27 00:02:00,080 --> 00:02:04,840 that run at the same clock speed as a CPU that has fewer cores and is smaller. 28 00:02:04,840 --> 00:02:09,440 Not only do you need to contend with more heat, it can also harm performance 29 00:02:09,440 --> 00:02:15,160 because at the clock speeds of modern CPUs, even a few extra centimeters can make it difficult 30 00:02:15,160 --> 00:02:19,200 to keep everything in sync, forcing you to run at lower clocks. 31 00:02:19,200 --> 00:02:23,640 This is especially true if you're trying to support that extra processing power 32 00:02:23,640 --> 00:02:28,160 with additional cache memory. This is part of the reason that if you've ever looked up the specs 33 00:02:28,160 --> 00:02:32,520 for high core count CPUs, you'll have noticed that the clock frequencies 34 00:02:32,520 --> 00:02:36,000 are generally lower than they are for more mainstream chips. 35 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:39,960 Similarly to how Wi-Fi is a trade-off between speed and range, 36 00:02:39,960 --> 00:02:43,840 CPU design is a trade-off between speed and die size 37 00:02:43,840 --> 00:02:48,680 or more specifically core count. So instead of trying to make the largest CPUs 38 00:02:48,680 --> 00:02:52,240 with the most transistors, manufacturers instead think about 39 00:02:52,240 --> 00:02:56,840 how the processor is actually going to be used and optimized for that. 40 00:02:56,840 --> 00:03:00,520 Because a huge CPU die would have to run at a lower clock speed, 41 00:03:00,520 --> 00:03:06,040 it might not be as good for an application like gaming or trying to get fast performance in a single thread 42 00:03:06,040 --> 00:03:10,760 is generally the best way to go. Additionally, simply brute forcing performance 43 00:03:10,760 --> 00:03:15,160 by adding more transistors doesn't always yield the best results anyway. 44 00:03:15,160 --> 00:03:18,440 Instead, the architecture of a CPU can be adjusted 45 00:03:18,440 --> 00:03:22,920 with specific use cases in mind, such as quick sync video on Intel platforms 46 00:03:22,920 --> 00:03:27,360 to help with transcoding or AMD's inclusion of PCI Express Gen 4 47 00:03:27,360 --> 00:03:32,520 to enable super high speed storage. So remember that bigger isn't always better. 48 00:03:32,520 --> 00:03:35,960 And besides, if they made CPU packages super huge, 49 00:03:35,960 --> 00:03:39,360 where would you put all that sweet RGB? So thanks for watching guys. 50 00:03:39,360 --> 00:03:42,920 You can like or dislike, depending on how you feel. Check out our other videos, 51 00:03:42,920 --> 00:03:46,040 leave a comment if you have a suggestion for a future fast as possible. 52 00:03:46,040 --> 00:03:49,080 We do read the comments and don't forget to subscribe 53 00:03:49,080 --> 00:03:55,800 because if you do, your mother will call you and be like, hey, why didn't you subscribe to Techquickie yet? 54 00:03:55,800 --> 00:03:59,560 You don't want your mom to call you about that. It's just awkward.