Beyond superscalar RISC, what next? An almost unbiased view
D.A. Luick · 2002
In the coming decade, unceasing demand for more processing power should drive microprocessor performance growth rates to nearly those of the past decade. Operating frequencies of 4 GHz and then approaching 10 GHz may be reached in 15 years as process geometries shrink well below 0.15 /spl mu/m. New microprocessor performance strategies will be required to fill the gap as gate performance fails to scale, wire delays begin to dominate cycle times, and superscalar parallelism approaches its limit. A new set of design dynamics for microprocessors and instruction set architectures (ISAs) will come about as physical, logical, and practical limits are encountered while new machine-independent languages, including Java, reduce or eliminate many conventional constraints on ISAs and their associated microarchitectures. Some of the sometimes conflicting trends emerging are discussed.