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====== 2019 recent trends in Geekbench score per CPU price ======

// Published 14 April, 2020; last updated 26 October, 2020 //

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<p>From 2006 – 2020, Geekbench score per CPU price has grown by around 16% a year, for rates that would yield an order of magnitude over roughly 16 years.</p>
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===== Details =====


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<p>We looked at Geekbench 5,<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-1-2413"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-1-2413" title='“Introducing Geekbench 5.” Geekbench 5 &amp;#8211; Cross-Platform Benchmark. Accessed April 2, 2020. &lt;a href="https://www.geekbench.com/"&gt;https://www.geekbench.com/&lt;/a&gt;.'><sup>1</sup></a></span> a benchmark for CPU performance. We combined Geekbench’s multi-core scores on its ‘Processor Benchmarks’ page<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-2-2413"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-2-2413" title='“Processor Benchmarks.” Processor Benchmarks &amp;#8211; Geekbench Browser. Accessed April 14, 2020. &lt;a href="https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks"&gt;https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks&lt;/a&gt;.'><sup>2</sup></a></span> with release dates and prices that we scraped from Wikichip and Wikipedia.<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-3-2413"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-3-2413" title='Starting with Geekbench’s list of CPUs, we Googled ‘&amp;lt;CPU&amp;gt; Wikichip’ and ‘&amp;lt;CPU&amp;gt; Wikipedia’ to find lists of processor release dates and prices. We then copied Wikichip tables into &lt;a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xP2ndDQYfrtC4IQQ35ndsf-Wam1078GC9wzFONE8jAk/edit?usp=sharing"&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Wikichip / Wikipedia Information’, and used &lt;a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Wn6aIo0qbVLrzI8sQRB9qRO6pyhQhmHf"&gt;this script&lt;/a&gt; to parse CPU data from tables in individual Wikipedia pages before copying them into the same spreadsheet.'><sup>3</sup></a></span> All our data and plots can be found <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xP2ndDQYfrtC4IQQ35ndsf-Wam1078GC9wzFONE8jAk/edit?usp=sharing">here</a>.<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-4-2413"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-4-2413" title="The ‘Geekbench Scores’ tab lists all the Geekbench CPU scores, while ‘Wikichip / Wikipedia Information’ stores all our scraped release dates and prices."><sup>4</sup></a></span> We then calculated score per dollar and adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index.<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-5-2413"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-5-2413" title="“CPI Home.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Accessed April 14, 2020. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/."><sup>5</sup></a></span> For every year, we calculated the 95th percentile score per dollar. We then fit linear and exponential trendlines to those scores.<br/></p>
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<p>Figure 1 shows all our data for Geekbench score per CPU price.<br/></p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized">
<img alt="" height="359" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/MQPtCMAM8oJRHbvS9UnCplssaHIG-JV8nLt0B1eoenHs_nBSs1dSremaUUmP41U8WX1Z296jG90O3TmEYG-DoIr-0RWoun-5VGjhKwmafK0SeIuyEdjZ93fAhbwpSa0QaqcQB5mr" width="581"/>
<figcaption>
                  Figure 1: Geekbench scores per CPU price, in 2019 dollars. Red dots denote the 95th percentile values in each year from 2006 – 2019 (we start at 2006 since we have &lt;= 2 data points a year prior to then). The exponential trendline through the 95th percentiles is marked in red, while the linear trendline is marked in green. The vertical axis is log-scale.
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</figure>
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<p>The data is well-described by a linear or an exponential trendline. Assuming an exponential trend,<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-6-2413"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-6-2413" title="Where ambiguous, we assume these trends are exponential rather than linear, because our understanding is that that is much more common historically in computing hardware price trends."><sup>6</sup></a></span> Geekbench score per CPU price grew by around 16% per year between 2006 and 2020, a rate that would yield a factor of ten every 16 years.<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-7-2413"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-7-2413" title='See &lt;a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xP2ndDQYfrtC4IQQ35ndsf-Wam1078GC9wzFONE8jAk/edit?usp=sharing"&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, sheet ‘Geekbench Scores’ for our calculations, which are next to the cell marked ‘Exponential trendline from 2006 &amp;#8211; now’.'><sup>7</sup></a></span></p>
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<p>This is a markedly slower growth rate than those observed for <a href="/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:trends_in_the_cost_of_computing">CPU price performance trends</a> in the past, however since it is for a different performance metric to any used earlier, it is unclear how similar one should expect them to be– from 1940 to 2008, <a href="/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:trends_in_the_cost_of_computing">Sandberg and Bostrom found</a> that CPU price performance grew by a factor of ten every 5.6 years when measured in MIPS per dollar, and by a factor of ten every 7.7 years when measured in FLOPS per dollar.<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-8-2413"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-8-2413" title='See our &lt;a href="https://aiimpacts.org/trends-in-the-cost-of-computing/"&gt;Trends in the cost of computing&lt;/a&gt; page, section ‘Sandberg and Bostrom’.'><sup>8</sup></a></span></p>
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<p><em>Primary author: Asya Bergal</em></p>
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===== Notes =====


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<ol class="easy-footnotes-wrapper">
<li><div class="li">
<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-1-2413"></span>“Introducing Geekbench 5.” Geekbench 5 – Cross-Platform Benchmark. Accessed April 2, 2020. <a href="https://www.geekbench.com/">https://www.geekbench.com/</a>.<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-1-2413"></a>
</div></li>
<li><div class="li">
<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-2-2413"></span>“Processor Benchmarks.” Processor Benchmarks – Geekbench Browser. Accessed April 14, 2020. <a href="https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks">https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks</a>.<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-2-2413"></a>
</div></li>
<li><div class="li">
<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-3-2413"></span>Starting with Geekbench’s list of CPUs, we Googled ‘&lt;CPU&gt; Wikichip’ and ‘&lt;CPU&gt; Wikipedia’ to find lists of processor release dates and prices. We then copied Wikichip tables into <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xP2ndDQYfrtC4IQQ35ndsf-Wam1078GC9wzFONE8jAk/edit?usp=sharing">this spreadsheet</a>, tab ‘Wikichip / Wikipedia Information’, and used <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Wn6aIo0qbVLrzI8sQRB9qRO6pyhQhmHf">this script</a> to parse CPU data from tables in individual Wikipedia pages before copying them into the same spreadsheet.<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-3-2413"></a>
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<li><div class="li">
<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-4-2413"></span>The ‘Geekbench Scores’ tab lists all the Geekbench CPU scores, while ‘Wikichip / Wikipedia Information’ stores all our scraped release dates and prices.<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-4-2413"></a>
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<li><div class="li">
<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-5-2413"></span>“CPI Home.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Accessed April 14, 2020. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/.<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-5-2413"></a>
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<li><div class="li">
<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-6-2413"></span>Where ambiguous, we assume these trends are exponential rather than linear, because our understanding is that that is much more common historically in computing hardware price trends.<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-6-2413"></a>
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<li><div class="li">
<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-7-2413"></span>See <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xP2ndDQYfrtC4IQQ35ndsf-Wam1078GC9wzFONE8jAk/edit?usp=sharing">this spreadsheet</a>, sheet ‘Geekbench Scores’ for our calculations, which are next to the cell marked ‘Exponential trendline from 2006 – now’.<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-7-2413"></a>
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<li><div class="li">
<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-8-2413"></span>See our <a href="/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:trends_in_the_cost_of_computing">Trends in the cost of computing</a> page, section ‘Sandberg and Bostrom’.<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-8-2413"></a>
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