How far could you overclock future cpu's?

[mmmishmash]

I know you can take modern processors to over 6 ghz with exotic cooling solutions but is there any chance that future cpu's from Intel or AMD would be overclockable to 6ghz with just either air cooling or water cooling? Not really sure if this is the correct question considering older AMD cpu clock speeds were... insane, so I know clockspeed isn't really the factor that tells the performance of a cpu. But does that mean future cpu's are just going to get better while maintaining same clockspeeds?

 

I'm kind of illiterate when it comes to all the things that apply to cpu performance. Would appreciate if someone had just links related to this topic (no matter how technical).

[Levent]

Let me ask my spirits.

[mariushm]

Yeah, nobody knows ... and if you look more carefully, you can see the trend is to go with chiplets and more cores in parallel ... you have the EPYCs with 64 cores / 128 threads, using 8 chiplets around an IO die.

 

With process shrinking (from 7nm to 5nm and lower), you may be able to use less power and put transistors closer together, so there's less distances between transistors, and this in theory makes it easier to reach higher frequencies. 

With process shrinking you get higher efficiency, so less heat produced, but the new process may or may not be suitable to just shove a lot of voltage to get very high frequencies. What works now (cooling really well and pumping power) may not work as well with new processes

[seban]

47 minutes ago, mmmishmash said:

I know you can take modern processors to over 6 ghz with exotic cooling solutions but is there any chance that future cpu's from Intel or AMD would be overclockable to 6ghz with just either air cooling or water cooling? Not really sure if this is the correct question considering older AMD cpu clock speeds were... insane, so I know clockspeed isn't really the factor that tells the performance of a cpu. But does that mean future cpu's are just going to get better while maintaining same clockspeeds?

 

I'm kind of illiterate when it comes to all the things that apply to cpu performance. Would appreciate if someone had just links related to this topic (no matter how technical).

6.75ghz on all cores with 93c 1.8v 

[Mling]

today's overclocks will be tomorrow's base frequency. I'm amazed that we can get affordable CPUs that are breaking 4GHz. My 2008 Core 2 Duo had a stable overclocked at 3.6GHz, up from 2.9GHz

[Radium_Angel]

40 minutes ago, 1ppOverheat said:

6.75ghz on all cores with 93c 1.8v 

Rookie numbers, I can hit 10Ghz on air cooling on my future Cyrix CPU. 

[Radium_Angel]

But on a more serious note, you may find this an interesting read

https://www.techspot.com/article/922-memorable-overclocking-friendly-cpus/#start

 

[Semper]

We're (relative to it's lifespan) quickly approaching the top end of the physical limitations of what silicon is capable of. Moore's law has started to stagnate, and while improvements are being made, it's currently more akin to premium binning than generation improvements of yesteryear.
From the factory, modern chips are being pushed close to the limit of their architecture, particularly with AMD post Ryzen launch. Overclocking generally isn't producing a performance increase like you would have seen back in the Pentium II days, as one example.
If my understanding is correct, alternatives to silicon are currently being explored by some of the big names in semiconductor manufacturing, though nothing (at least to my knowledge) seems to be the forerunner, yet. There's no expectations that can be extrapolated for any overclocking potential on a new material if we; 1. Don't know what it is, or 2. know how it will operate. Until the day comes that we do, It's not likely that overclocking is going to revolutionize your performance gains like it once did. I find it more likely that the overhead for overclocking will continue to tighten to the point that it's ultimately an exercise in futility.
 

[Beerzerker]

It's a possibility 6GHz could be had from future chips, depending on the design, boards and BIOS used and so on.
However the above makes alot of sense to me.

Eventually the limits of what silicon can do will be acheived and that's it - Game over for any future bumps in speed and/or capability.

However... I must say some of the limitations we've known about with more modern CPU's are artificial too.
It's been proven, for example that modern Intel chips CAN exceed 110 BCLK/FSB easily but the limitation is still there. That's most likely being done to keep folks from doing as many have done before - Buy a cheaper model and OC the crap out of it negating the "Need" for a more expensive model chip, which in turn means less $$ for the manufacturer per sale made.

I will admit OC'ing in general isn't as prevalent as before and for good reason, the need to bump it up for better performance just isn't there with the efficiency and capabilities the new chips already have.

True OC'ing is becoming a lost art, used to be you'd do it all from the BIOS yourself and that took time to learn and gain the experience to do it - Now it's mostly desktp software and OC'ing is just a click away; No fuss or hassle for most.

I still do it the old way, in the BIOS and I can rip through one once I'm familiar with the board and chip being used.
I will say some of the utils (Software) that can be found are indeed useful and do help but you gotta know what you are doing in the first place and that still goes back to the basics.
Knowing "How" it behaves when things don't work is a big part of it but most don't know how to read the symptoms the system will give and like a good doctor, you must interprit the signs to know what to do next.

I coudn't have set the WR in MHz for any benchmark runs ever ran for a result if I didn't have an idea about it all but I did just that earlier this month.

With newer chips all this is possible but sadly we'll never see the likes of the older, OC'able stuff ever again.

Don't be suprised if in the future the capability to OC goes away period and we're all stuck "At Stock".