Nice article, not that you need me to tell you that, but juust the same....


Paul DeMone (pdemone@igs.net) on 2/6/03 wrote:
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>Richard Stacpoole (rstacpol@bigpond.net.au) on 2/6/03 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>Are chip design methodologies starting to reach a point where automated design
>>tools etc (I am refering specifically to the comments on the Power4+/970) are becoming
>>good enough to stand up to full custom design? I am thinking of quicker turn-around
>>to new techniques, ability to react to market changes faster etc.
>>Is there a parallel to the old battles over writing in assembly to using higher level languages?
>
>Yes, the analogy works in many ways. Of course it is also
>breaks down in certain aspects.
>
>
>>
>>A second quick point. Could Mr DeMone include the compiler used to generate the
>>scores in the summary table. I mainly use gcc, use free OS's so would like to reach a better comparison.
>
>As clearly stated in the text, those scores are estimates,
>not measurements. These estimates are extrapolated from
>the published performance of existing, similar processor
>designs. As such it would reflect the use of the best
>compiler for each MPU family (e.g. TRU64 compiler for
>Alpha, Sun compiler for SPARC, HP/Intel compilers for IA64
>etc).