February 6, 201016 yr We've definitely reached the limits of traditional silicon transistors, long ago, in fact. At temperatures at or above ambient room temperature, transistors seem to max out at somewhere between 4-5GHz, depending upon CMOS process characteristics (SOI, HKMG, etc.). At sub-ambient temperature, clock speeds as high as 8GHz can be realized. I doubt we'll be seeing chips with significantly higher clockspeeds any time soon. More IPC and more concurrent threads is the paradigm for the foreseeable future.
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