alephnull on 07 February 2008
@rocketpig, @lafiel, @stranne
Shrinking the process to 45nm decreases the distance electrical signals must travel every clock cycle. This allows a chip to run at a lower voltage when clockspeed is held constant. This allows a chip to run not only with lower power consumption and heat generation (P=V^2/R), but also reduces gate leakage (which further reduces power consumption) which is a significant cause of circuit failure. Gate leakage is the reason you can't just overclock your PC's cpu indefinitely even with fancy cooling equipment. It's also why your OC'd machine will tend to be unstable even though it may POST.
If you reduce gate leakage you increase sample rate.
