Re: PPC/RISC STILL ON!!
Adrian Penalo
On 12/14/09 9:26 AM, in article 011f4619$0$23372$c3e...@news.astraweb.com,
"JF Mezei" <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> abpp wrote:
>> The thing is that when it comes to CISC vs. RISC, CPU speed is not
>> relevant!
>
> There used to be a time were it was relevant... for marketing purposes.
> But now, with CPUs sort of stuck at the 2-3ghz range, the speed is less
> important and the architecture of the system becomes more important. How
> many cores you got, the cache (whether shared between cores or not) and
> memory inteconnect become determining factors in performance.
You said it, 'Marketing', not facts. That is why FLOPS is what really
counts!
> The Nehalem CPU from Intel brought the Intel 8086 back in the game. AMD
> had an euivalent some time ago (forget ehich name it had). Both are the
> result of engineers that came from Digital Equipment Corp and who had
> work on Alpha (first with many of those designs).
Well, the IBM PowerXCell 8i is not too shabby, you know!
>> RISC will always be faster at the same numerical speeds!
>
> Not quite. Remeber that a RISC needs to perform many more operations to
> get task done.
But with a more efficient reduce set and better register management.
>
> ...
>
>> PPC/ARM outpaces x86 in all aspects, why you think 90% of all hand-
>> helds/cells use ARM??
>
> ARM isn't about performance, it is about energy efficency to allow long
> battery life.
Right! The same argument that Apple used at the beginning of the
'transition' ("Oh, the PPC is kind of power-hungry for laptops, blah, blah,
blah..."). But the new (circa 2007) Freescale chips like the MPC5121e and
the i.MX515 are all about power efficiency and cost. Don't forget cost,
that was another lie From Jobs (Mac laptops are still as expensive as with
PPCs)!
>> Why you think Nintendo, Sony, and even Microsoft used PPC??
>
> That is the interesting question. IBM was willing to bend over and
> produce Power chips suited for game console, but too interested in
> producig chips that Apple needed. Perhaps the market for game consoles
> is much larger ?
They did offered, but Jobs basically said, "Apple, using game-console chips?
Never! Let's join the other side"!)
abpp
On Dec 16, 1:13 am, Adrian Penalo <apena...@aim.com> wrote:
> On 12/14/09 9:26 AM, in article 011f4619$0$23372$c3e8...@news.astraweb.com,
abpp
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10423606-64.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0