[geeks] Itanium 32 bit performace.... hahahaha

[jdboyd at jdboyd.zill.net]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 09:51:44AM -0800, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> --- Kevin <kevin at mpcf.com> wrote:
> > I've heard this before, but have never understood it.  What is it
> > about Alphas that requires more RAM than other processors?  My Alpha
> > has 256 and seems to run fine as a file server.
> 
> I think this is mainly a RISC vs. CISC point, not that the Alpha chip
> is that much worse than other RISC chips...

I get the impression that the Alpha has alignment rules that make it
generally worse than other 64bit chips.  I seem to recall something
about needing to do 256bit alignments or take a significant performance
hit?  If I'm recalling correctly, then people who don't write code for
the alpha with sufficient care would end up having their compiler waste
a lot of space for performance reasons.