Number of transistors on a Intel chip

[BLOB]

Why does the amount of transistors packed inside the Intel chip or any other microprocessor chip keep on increasing even if it is single core?
Intel 80486DX microprocessor is 32 bit and so is pentium II ... But, the number of transistors in former is 1.2 million and the latter is 7.5 million...
What accounts to the increase in the amount of transistors? They are both single core right?

Also, Can modern microprocessors have in-built functionality to do trigonometric operations/multiplication/divisions?

[cadet1620]

Modern microprocessors are more than just a CPU. Both the 80486DX and Pentium II have on-chip memory caches, 8Kb for the 486 and 32Kb for the P2. Also, paradoxically, lots of hardware can be made faster by using more gates. For instance, a 64-bit adder can be made about 3 times as fast by using a technique called look-ahead carry generation but it requires about twice as much hardware.

Most microprocessors intended for general purpose computing include hardware floating point processors. I don't know of any that have hardware trig.

--Mark

[BLOB]

So, if the microprocessor doesn't use any cache memory (like hack computer we implemented), for a given architecture, the amount of transistors should be more or less the same right? And am I learning about cache memory in the upcoming chapters? (I am in chap 6)

[cadet1620]

Number of transistors will depend on other features of the processor, too. Using number of transistors to compare processors is like using weight to compare a 2-door car to a 2-door truck. They have the same number of doors so they must weigh about the same, right?

Cache memory is an advanced concept and is not discussed in this book.

--Mark

[BLOB]

cadet1620 wrote

They have the same number of doors so they must weigh about the same, right?