🚀 go-pugleaf

"Stefano Agostinelli" <agos001@pn.itnet.it> wrote:

>  There's little intelligence in comparing a 100MHz cpu with a 25MHz

Yes, exactly.  That's what I've been trying to say :-), but you keep
insisting on saying, "well, *if* they ran at the same clock speed, the
68K would be faster!".  While true, that is meaningless unless you can
actually purchase a 68060 at the same clock speed.

>  Well it means cause if cpu A provides 2x power than cpu B at the same clock
>  rate I tend to think that cpu A is clearly superior in terms of "power".

No, it doesn't mean that at all.  "At the same clock rate" is
meaningless when the CPUs cannot run at the same clock rate.  The DEC
Alpha run at 266 MHz.  Even if it would be as slow as a 68060 if it ran
at 50 MHz, it is still quite safe to say it is a more powerful chip.
One has to compare reality, not some hypothetical situation where you
make the clock speeds the same.

If my LW render or a complex symbolic integration takes many times
longer on my 68060, I care little that it *would* be as powerful as the
P6 *if* it could run at 200 MHz.

>  However it seems that Pentium and 060 at same clock rate are about as
>  fast.

Again, only in theory, because in real life the clocks speeds are not
the same.  166 MHz Pentiums are available now, and 200s are either out
or close.  Would you like to bet on the chance of there ever being a 166
MHz 68060?

> > answer is always the same: the Intel chips have higher absolute FP *and*
> > Int performance than 680x0.
> 
>  No this is wrong.Motorola tests say the 040 is twice as fast than a 486
>  at the same clock rate.Pentium is instead just as fast than a 060 at the
>  same clock rate.

I said the Intel chips have a higher absolute FP and int performance.
This is not wrong.  I did *not* make any claims about any specific
chips.  Of course, you can find specific comparisons where Motorola is
faster than Intel.  You can find specific comparisons where Zilog is
faster than Intel, too.

My claim was only that the Intel chips are the faster architecture,
because there are no 68K chips that run as fast as even the middle of
the road Pentiums, let alone the P6's.

I hate Intel chips because they have breathtakingly poor non-orthogonal
instruction sets, induced a huge amount of legacy 16 bit code, and many
other reasons.  But it makes little sense to hate them for being slow,
because they are a great deal faster than the architecture I like (68k).

>  I'm not posting this crap..I've just stated that the problem is that Intel
>  chips are available at higher clock rates.

Right.  If it was easy to get the 68K up to 200 MHz, it would have been
done.  There are many factors that determine the clock speed at which a
chip can be run, and one cannot always just increase the clock rate
arbitrarily or cheaply.  Chip designers must design for high clock
speeds, and even then, yield at the higher rates is often poor.

   - steve