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Article #3102

Re: Floating point performance & Mr. Mashey's Mythical Mhz

#3102
From: Daniel Klein
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 1986 14:49
34 lines
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Okay, blatant, flaming opinion time...

I really don't care how fast the internal engine has to run to produce my
output.  If my little Alfa Romeo is tooling down the highway at 70 MPH with
an internal engine cycle time of 3100 RPM, and I get passed by a Ferrari
doing 110 MPH with an internal engine speed of 4900 RPM, who is going faster?
Certainly not me, not matter how you multiply the numbers!  My MPH/RPM is a
little higher, but I got my doors blown off nonetheless.

So if I am able to build some bizarre semi-synchronous architecture with a
2 GHz clock rate, does it mean my machine is slower (when you divide out the
clock in MFlops/MHz)?  I don't think so.  If we are looking for an esoteric
comparison of architectural efficiency, *then* perhaps we have a reasonable
metric here.

Now, wasn't it interesting how the MIPS machines appeared at the top of the
performance chart in the initial posting by Mashey?  Personally, I think RISC
architectures are a good idea, so I'm not arguing architectural values here.
But RISC looks just *great* when you use the clever little formula of
MFlops/MHz.  All I care about though, is who gets my jobs done the fastest.


--> The standard disclaimer: my opinions are my own, so there, nyaa nyaa.
--
--=============--=============--=============--=============--=============--
Daniel V. Klein, who lives in Pittsburgh, allegedly works for the Software
Engineering Institute, and strives to survive as best he can.

		ARPA:	dvk@sei.cmu.edu
		USENET:	{ucbvax,harvard,cadre}!dvk@sei.cmu.edu

	"The only thing that separates us from the animals is
	    superstition and mindless rituals".
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From: dvk@sei.cmu.edu (Daniel Klein)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Floating point performance & Mr. Mashey's Mythical Mhz
Message-ID: <374@aw.sei.cmu.edu.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 4-Nov-86 09:49:47 EST
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Posted: Tue Nov  4 09:49:47 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 5-Nov-86 06:01:09 EST
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