Wistron Shows Montavista Phone (PC Magazine)

Wistron Shows Montavista Phone (PC Magazine)

Posted Jan 9, 2008 0:39 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
In reply to: Wistron Shows Montavista Phone (PC Magazine) by jonth
Parent article: Wistron Shows Google Android Phone (PC Magazine)

And, Moore's law speaks about the number of transistors: at a given price, it will double every 18 months. It says nothing about processor speeds.

I think it was a historical accident that processor speeds grew that fast in 1970-2000. In fact, the current generation of processors runs slower than the last (in Intel's i386 offerings), or roughly at the same speed (everyone else). It does not seem to be practical to go beyond 3 GHz, and yet transistor densities are still increasing at the predicted rate. Also in the embedded space, which means that the new processors can do much more in the same space (and with the same power). Speed is not the only factor.

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Intel's Core 2 Duo's run considerably faster than Pentium 4's, even with just one core - they
have a similar clock speed but can get more work done per clock. 

Intel would not still be in business if its new processors were slower than the old ones, and
in fact it is beating AMD at present.