Computing · 1974

Dennard scaling

Shrink a transistor and it gets faster while using the same power per area.

Robert Dennard's team showed that scaling MOSFET dimensions and voltage together keeps power density constant. This free lunch drove clock speeds up for 30 years until it broke down around 2005.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Moore's law 1965
MOSFET 1959

What it led to 1

Multi-core processors 2005

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Transistors per microprocessor Latest: 58.2B transistors (2021) Source: Our World in Data

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6