QUOTE
Processors have had a long history often checkered with heat emergencies. When CPUs first broke the Gigahertz line, huge heat sinks and powerful fans were necessary to cope with the heat that these chips dissipated. Some products, such as the Intel Pentium 3, would crash when they overheated; an Athlon 1200 could even physically burn out if the cooler was removed. Things were better with the Pentium 4, because this processor was capable of reducing clock speed in order to decrease heat dissipation in the event that the cooler failed or fell off. However, heat emergencies still exist today, even though energy efficiency has increased a lot, and processors come with various protective mechanisms. With the performance per watt debate that's going on, people tend to believe that modern processor products have overcome these issues, but they have not.
It's not only AMD that has had difficult times: almost exactly three years ago, Intel went through its own "valley of darkness" with its Pentium 4 processor family. These processors had just about reached clock speeds of 4 GHz, but at the cost of ridiculously high heat dissipation. They could not beat the AMD Athlon 64 processor family regardless of their record-breaking clock speeds, either. In November 2004 we found that the 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 560 ran so close to its thermal limits that processors automatically throttled their clock speed to decrease the thermal strain.
What is the situation today, though? Will processors still physically die if the cooler falls off? What if just the fan stops working? According to the energy efficiency claims from AMD and Intel, heat cannot be all that critical anymore. Or can it?
It's not only AMD that has had difficult times: almost exactly three years ago, Intel went through its own "valley of darkness" with its Pentium 4 processor family. These processors had just about reached clock speeds of 4 GHz, but at the cost of ridiculously high heat dissipation. They could not beat the AMD Athlon 64 processor family regardless of their record-breaking clock speeds, either. In November 2004 we found that the 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 560 ran so close to its thermal limits that processors automatically throttled their clock speed to decrease the thermal strain.
What is the situation today, though? Will processors still physically die if the cooler falls off? What if just the fan stops working? According to the energy efficiency claims from AMD and Intel, heat cannot be all that critical anymore. Or can it?
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This is crazy I say, just crazy!!!
