[rescue] SGI, MIPS, and IA-64

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On February 14, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> > >   The i860 was widely used as a high-speed embedded processor for many
> > > applications, not the least of which are the SGI Reality Engine (eight
> > > i860s for geometric stuff) and Reality Engine 2 (twelve i860s).  It
> > > failed as a mainstream processor, however, primarily because it is
> > > very difficult to program with any degree of efficiency.
> > 
> > Well, so far the ia-64 certainly isn't entering the mainstream.  What do you 
> > think of this chip anyway?  It appears to be decent.
> 
>   I've not looked at it in-depth.  On the surface it just looks like
> another overcomplicated intel processor.

Yup, the funny thing was that it was supposed to be a simpler
architecture! By putting all the complexity on the compilers. Now they
ended with an overly complex hardware, and an overly complex compiler. Way
to go intel!!!! 

Actually it does not surprise me. It turns out that intel has had a huge
talent drain. Friends that worked there quited in droves, seems it was one
of the worst places to work! So most of the good people weere not involved
in the Itanic disaster. However the only saving grace for intel is that
they still dominate the whole process technology. So they can make pieces
of turd go really fast.

> > I think the bundles are cool (a bundle has 3 41bit instructions in them, which
> > are guaranteed to execute simultaneously, to my understanding), plus for the
> > most part it looks like IA-64 can execute 2 bundles at once (meaning 6 parallel
> > instructions).
> 
>   Wow, six whole instructions...one more than the (several year old)
> MIPS R10K.  Isn't Intel wonderful?
> 

Yeah, and the power4 can issue up to 8 instructions and retire 6 of
them... If only IBM was to drop the price of those things to mop the walls
with intel!