Article View: comp.arch
Article #21566Re: superscalar
From: aglew
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 1989 19:05
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 1989 19:05
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2327 bytes
>[Brooks]
>Needless to say, when the application starts missing cache (for any of the
>microprocessors) the performance rapidly drops into a hole when compared to the
>classic supercomputer. The microprocessor vendors now need to learn the last
>lesson in supercomputer architecture, which is getting adequate main memory
>bandwidth. Since interleaving memory chips with glue logic would raise cost
>too much, the micro vendors need to get in close collaboration with the memory
>chip vendors to get the interleaving done on the memory chips themselves. This
>may be a good way for the U.S. manufactures to get back into the memory chip
>biz. Design your micro with interleave control on the chip and then design
>your memory chips that have a compatible arangement, then don't tell the
>foreign memory chip vendors about the micro/memory chip interface until you
>get to market. Interleaving on the memory chip is not a difficult thing to do,
>one only has to decide that it is time to do it.
So, we're back to memory again. I hesitate to get involved, since we all
heard Mark Johnson saying "Don't talk about, buy it!", to us intellectual
weenies who can only talk about things - but I can only talk about it for
the moment, so here goes:
Q: how many processor chip vendors will be willing to tie themselves
tightly into a memory manufacturer? Well, there are some companies
who do both... but are you going to risk customers refusing to
buy your processor chip because they have to use your memory chips
with it?
Prediction: people will be very slow to get into tightly coupled
processor/memory. But when they do, the processor companies will
probably put out both custom memory and non-custom memory processor
chips - probably by last stage customization of the die. Ditto memory.
This will probably be suboptimal.
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdurb!aglew From: aglew@mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: superscalar Message-ID: <28200329@mcdurb> Date: 4 Jun 89 19:05:00 GMT References: <26356@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> Lines: 31 Nf-ID: #R:lll-winken.LLNL.GOV:26356:mcdurb:28200329:000:1865 Nf-From: mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM!aglew Jun 4 14:05:00 1989