[rescue] sparc10 cpu - what to do.

[Dave McGuire]

On 12/16/2016 02:31 PM, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> My personal opinion: what helped to kill SPARC was interpreted
> languages like Perl, where the code to be executed was far larger than
> could fit in cache.
> 
> When running a compiled program, the smaller caches of SPARC didn't
> matter as much. But with Perl, Python etc. having such a large
> footprint, the x86 CPUs with more L2 cache gained an advantage.
> 
> Not sure if anyone agrees with that? It is my naive, non-OS-developer viewpoint.

  I'm not sure I can agree with that.  First, most SPARCs had much
larger caches than x86 implementations of the same era.  Second, there
wasn't much that higher-end SPARCs couldn't do faster than higher-end
x86 implementations.  There were the crappy SPARCs, like the IIi and
IIe, but they don't count in my book. ;)

  What really helped to kill SPARCs, assuming they've actually been
killed (I've seen no formal announcement of their discontinuance), is
PeeCee fanboys.

             -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA