Pollack's Rule

Pollack's Rule states that microprocessor "performance increase is roughly proportional to [the] square root of [the] increase in complexity". This contrasts with power consumption increase, which is roughly linearly proportional to the increase in complexity. Complexity in this context means processor logic, i.e its area.

The rule, which is an industry term, is named for Fred Pollack, a lead engineer and fellow at Intel.

Pollack's Rule gained increasing relevance in 2008 due to the broad adoption of multi-core computing and concern expressed by businesses and individuals at the huge electricity demands of computers.

A generous interpretation of the rule allows for a future in which an ideal CPU could contain hundreds of cores, each operating at very low power and together performing large amounts of (processing) work quickly.

External sources and links

*cite web | url=http://videos.dac.com/44th/papers/42_1.pdf| first=Shekhar |last=Borkar |title= Thousand Core Chips - A Technology Perspective|accessdate=2008-06-01
*cite web | url=http://www.chipdesignmag.com/display.php?articleId=1680&issueId=24 | first=Bob | last=Beachler| title= New Multicore Architectures Face Substantial Challenges| work=Chip Design | date=Aug/Sept 2007 |accessdate=2008-06-01