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Subject: Re: Crafty for Psion/Palm ??

Author: Eugene Nalimov

Date: 23:12:21 02/15/00

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On February 16, 2000 at 00:26:19, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On February 15, 2000 at 22:45:28, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>
>>On February 15, 2000 at 20:42:43, Ricardo Gibert wrote:
>>
>>>MIPS VR4121 is a 64 bit CPU according to NEC. Look at
>>>http://www.nec.com/Semiconductors/categories/679/981008.html
>>
>>You're right... Hmmm... I wonder what the "64 bit" measures. Maybe memory
>>interface? Because it seems pretty silly to have a full-blown 64-bit embedded
>>processor, when your desktop machine is still 32-bit...
>>
>>-Tom
>
>
>Wait a minute. The VR4121 processor claims pin-to-pin compatibility with the
>VR4111. And the VR4111 is a "false 64 bits" processor. Operations can be done on
>64 bits internally, but the data bus size is 16 or 32 bits. That is, there is a
>serious bottleneck between the processor and the memory when it comes to 64 bits
>values.
>
>I'm not even sure that this processor really supports clean 64 bits operations.
>All the docs I have mention 16 and 32 bits long instructions. How do you perform
>a move immediate with a 64 bits value if your instruction length is limited to
>32 bits?

IBM/360, as well as IBM/370, also have no instruction "move immediate 32-bit
value"; if you want to load literal that is longer than 12 bits, you have to
load it from memory. Nevertheless it is true 32-bit processor.

At that MIPS processor, loading/storing 64-bit values can be slower than 32-bit
values - but total impact on performance would be small enough. Small size of
cache is much more important, but I believe Crafty would perform as it's running
on P90-120.

Eugene

>And don't count on the 8Kb internal L1 data cache to store all the data needed
>by Crafty...
>
>A bitboard program looks like a poor choice for this architecture.
>
>
>
>    Christophe



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