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Subject: Re: the empire strikes back

Author: Tom Kerrigan

Date: 14:18:27 01/12/02

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On January 11, 2002 at 10:45:41, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On January 10, 2002 at 05:07:37, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>
>>On January 10, 2002 at 03:06:23, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>
>>>On January 09, 2002 at 17:12:11, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>>
>>>>>It's faster only because of the clockspeed. Granted, that is made
>>>>>possible by the silly design, but it doesn't make it any nicer,
>>>>>especially compared vs the Athlons.
>>>>
>>>>To rearrange your wording, the P4's design allows it to reach higher >clockspeeds which results in faster performance. Again, how is this "silly"?
>>>
>>>It's silly because they have to make it this way. It's faster
>>>solely by means of clockspeed.
>>>
>>>>Do you want a chip that performs well or one that clocks slow? Seems like >you're asking for the latter.
>>>
>>>It's possible to make well-performing chips that clock slower :)
>>>
>>>I would just like to see a new chip and an innovative design with
>>>real new features. The trend now is to make stupider chips that
>>>run at a higher clockspeed. I would have found it more interesting
>>>to see a slower clocked but smarter (and thus faster) chip.
>>
>>I can't believe you think the P4's design isn't innovative. It's the first x86
>>chip to have a trace cache. Its branch predictor is probably the best ever made
>>by anybody. It's the first chip that I know of that has a double clocked ALU. It
>>has SMT logic (although not enabled currently). The list goes on. Basically,
>>there's hardly anything about the P4 that _isn't_ innovative.
>
>Do you remember the 486 DX4 and the like?  Even a triple-clocked ALU was done
>years ago.

That was relative to the FSB speed. I was quite obviously referring to the fact
that the P4's ALUs run at twice the frequency of the rest of the CPU.

-Tom



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