Why is the 7nm Ruilong three times better than the 14nm Core single-core?

In the past few years, when it comes to CPU squeezing toothpaste, many players are very unhappy. Some people say that 2600K will fight for another 5 years. This is almost the CPU of 9 years ago. Why is it so difficult to upgrade a single core?

There was a post on Reddit that was very hotly discussed today. Netizen MediocreLeader asked a very sharp question – why does transistor density have no effect on single-core performance?

He cited the examples of AMD and Intel processors. AMD’s Ryzen 3000 uses TSMC’s 7nm process, and the transistor density reaches 96.5MTr/mm2, which is nearly 100 million transistors per square millimeter, while Intel’s 14nm process The transistor density is 37.5MTr/mm2, about 1/3 of the former.

Under the advantage of triple density, why is the single-core performance of 7nm Ryzen similar to that of 14nm Core?

This question has sparked heated discussions among Reddit netizens. All netizens quoted scriptures and started their own analysis and discussions, but no one came up with an explanation that convinces everyone.

In essence, there is no necessary relationship between transistor density and single-core performance. Moore’s Law has mainly guided transistor density and core area for many years. However, starting from the 16/14nm node, not only has Moore’s Law slowed down or even failed, manufacturers The naming of the new process is also more for commercial marketing, which Samsung and TSMC have admitted.

ARM CTO has made a statement a few years ago, and the semiconductor process basically has no performance improvement since 16nm.

As for the manufacturer’s announcement that the new process has improved the performance of XX, it is compared with the same power consumption state, and there are strict restrictions.

Not to mention, ARM, TSMC and other companies announced in 2013 that the 20nm process can produce 3GHz high-performance processors. In fact, up to the current 7nm process, none of Qualcomm, Huawei, Apple, and Samsung can achieve 3GHz ARM. The highest frequency of the processor has been stuck at around 2.8GHz for several years, let alone the stable frequency.

It’s so hard to boost single-core performance with a low-power ARM, let alone a high-performance X86 processor.