By: Patrick Chase (patrickjchase.delete@this.gmail.com), February 3, 2013 3:35 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on February 3, 2013 2:58 pm wrote:
> > R10K was 307 mm^2 in for core + L1s, PPro was 198 mm^2 for the same,
> > both in 0.35 um. PPro was ~1/3 smaller, period, end of discussion.
>
> I would not say that is the only thing that matters, if you make a statement like "x86 penalty is trivial".
David's article addressed the area penalty for x86, and that was the context of my subsequent reply in this forum. Given that context, area is indeed the only thing that matters (provided the processes are equivalent - As I noted previously, I think Intel actually had the edge at that point. 0.35um BiCMOS and 0.35um CMOS are not the same thing).
You should of course start a new discussion with a different context of your choice, or separately reply to David and explain why his metric is bogus (though he already acknowledged its limitations in his article).
FWIW, I have a dim recollection of an Email or USENET post from Bob Colwell (chief architect of P6) where he gave his estimate of how much he "paid" for x86 - He estimated 1 million gates out of 5.5. So by his estimate P6 was slightly above the 15% mark. I'd still argue (as Bob did at the time) that that falls into the "trivial" range in that it won't realistically be a significant factor in purchasing decisions.
-- Patrick
> > R10K was 307 mm^2 in for core + L1s, PPro was 198 mm^2 for the same,
> > both in 0.35 um. PPro was ~1/3 smaller, period, end of discussion.
>
> I would not say that is the only thing that matters, if you make a statement like "x86 penalty is trivial".
David's article addressed the area penalty for x86, and that was the context of my subsequent reply in this forum. Given that context, area is indeed the only thing that matters (provided the processes are equivalent - As I noted previously, I think Intel actually had the edge at that point. 0.35um BiCMOS and 0.35um CMOS are not the same thing).
You should of course start a new discussion with a different context of your choice, or separately reply to David and explain why his metric is bogus (though he already acknowledged its limitations in his article).
FWIW, I have a dim recollection of an Email or USENET post from Bob Colwell (chief architect of P6) where he gave his estimate of how much he "paid" for x86 - He estimated 1 million gates out of 5.5. So by his estimate P6 was slightly above the 15% mark. I'd still argue (as Bob did at the time) that that falls into the "trivial" range in that it won't realistically be a significant factor in purchasing decisions.
-- Patrick