🚀 go-pugleaf

David T. Wang (veakblad@Glue.umd.edu) wrote:
: Sorry, I'd have to disagree (naturally) There is no P6 with the 512K cache 
: at this time. the only announced "512K" version is the 166 MHz version, 
: for the server market, though that version still hasn't shipped yet (to my
: knowledge)  P6 does have a lot of transistors, but I don't think that 
: you'll hear many people call the Dec Alpha 21164 bloated. it's got 9.3
: million transistors on the same die.  Die size wise, the 200 MHz P6 is
: smaller than PPC604-100, 120 and 133 (194 mm^2 vs 196 mm^2)

Compared to the Pentium or PentiumPro, the Alpha 21164A/300 is a sleek 
SOB.  Its has 9.3 million transistors because it has both a 8KB direct 
mapped AND a 96KB level 2 cache right on the same piece of silicone.

BTW, the Pentium Pro's LV 2 cache is not on the same silicon slice with 
the rest of the CPU, rather, it is only sharing the same package. 

: : If they acheive their 2 billion ops/sec goal it will likely come from higher clock
: : speed than anthing else.  I think Intel and HP are only working together to "borrow"
: : some technologies to improve their own respective CPU designs.

: : That's my opinion anyways.

: yes, "borrow".  However, everyone "borrows" from someone else. It has been
: pointed out that all the "new" concepts contained in P6, like Out of Order 
: execution, are all concepts that mainframe designers employed a good 20 to 30 
: year ago.  Even VLIW is a good 20 years old.  The difficulty is in deciding
: which technology to "borrow" and implement a state of the art CPU. 

Digital Equipment plans to have the Alpha pushed out past 1 GigaHerz by 
the year 2000, and even SGI/Mips/Cray plan to be at least a full step 
ahead of anything Intel puts out (the P6/150 only does 215 SPECfp while a 
MIPS R10000 does around 600 SPECfp).  True that Intel puts more focus into 
Integer math while MIPS put its focus in Floating Point, but the fact 
remains...  now that SGI is running things a lot more over at MIPS, I 
can't wait to see what they have in store for us with the R12000.


But he is correct by saying "borrow".  When I look at the specs for all 
workstation RISC based CPUs, the HP-PA is the 2nd slowest (only the PPC620 
is slower).  The odd thing is that in dollar volume, the HP-PA line sold 
the most.  Why is it that the worst CPUs always sell the best?  Hmmm... 
Anyways, I fear that both will snag stuff from other chip makers.  I see 
the design of something close to the 'Visual Instruction Set' that the 
UltraSparcs use, or some kind of new instruction sets designed to handle 
specific jobs.

                       Greg Baldwin (drizzit@eskimo.com)
     Amiga junkie and user since 1987    Computer Science & DTV Student
     Commodore64 fan since about 1983    http://www.eskimo.com/~drizzit
               Tyranical EFNet #Amiga Channel Operator "Drizzit"