[rescue] Wanted: Old Sun Hardware

[nate at portents.com]

> OK to clarify:
> 1. I was only talking about Sun systems, which have never shipped Atom
> or ARM-based units.

I figured that, but in-order vs. out-of-order is a very arbitrary way to
rank processors, which was my point, though that arbitrariness almost
works for just Sun hardware...

> I think there is a distinction that would not have to be stated when we
> are talking about workstation and high-end server systems vs. embedded
> CPUs designed for power efficiency....

Eh, it's not that simple.  Sure, you might argue that the processors in
the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 are 'embedded' and therefore the fact that
they're in-order doesn't matter, and maybe you'll say it doesn't matter
that Itanium is in-order because it's VLIW and not CISC/RISC, but what
about IBM POWER6?

I realize it was a big deal when IBM introduced out-of-order execution to
the PowerPC 601 in 1993, followed by the SPARC64 and Pentium Pro in 1995
(though UltraSPARC was an in-order CPU also introduced in 1995).  I'm not
sure how much it says about a CPU anymore whether it's execution is
in-order or out-of-order, other than it's an aspect of a given instance of
an architecture at a particular time.

- Nate