Advantages of Parallel Hz

[Wilco Dijkstra]

"Guy Macon" <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote in message

Let me get this straight. If someone claims "the earth is flat" and someone else
calls that trolling and asks for evidence supporting that claim, which poster is the
troll according to your definition?

Just so there can be no confusion, calling Alpha micro coded is like saying the
earth is flat. Several people provided quotes from Alpha manuals that clearly
show that one of the key goals of Alpha was to not use micro code.

Wilco

 

[krw]

The poster that said:

"Ok then, name one significant processor today that is totally ucode free..."

That is *NOT* the same thing as saying that ALL RISC processors are
microcode free.

Ie. he was pretty sure that nobody could name a CPU that doesn't use micro code.

Filter your "nobody can name" down to "significant" and "today".
They are *NOT* the same argument. Certainly we can name a RISC
processor that's not microcoded; PPC-750. It's not significant
today, however.

In fact the reverse is true, few (if any) modern CPUs use micro code.

You're simply wrong here.

No, not at all. I'm saying that people who just claim to know better are trolling.

If they disagree with you (even though they *KNOW* what they're
talking about), they're trolling. Now I see.

People who really know better can provide evidence supporting their claims.
So far all I've seen is baseless claims and special pleading ("Trust me, I know
what I'm talking about, but you don't"). I have to say that doesn't impress me in
the slightest. Please teach rather than preach.

Well... If you had the VHDL in your hands I could show you the
microcode, but since you don't have it...

 

[MooseFET]

Having seen Radium go on about sound cards on comp.dsp some time ago, I
think (now) that I understand his point, and it's a subtle one, but it's
actually (I think) becoming a more significant one as the performance
relationship between memory and processors change.

It's the difference between using the 2D video accelerator in your
graphics card to render your desktop icons from SVG, rather than copying
some bitmaps that someone has rendered (once) with PhotoShop.

It's TruType or PostScript fonts, rather than bitmap fonts.

It's on-the-fly synthesis rather than wave-table or sample synthesis.

It's the wheel of reincarnation coming up behind Terje's "all computing
can be viewed as an exercise in caching" aphorism.

Pretty obviously there are serious limits to how far one can "generate on
the fly" and still do anything useful, but I don't think that we've
returned to the limit yet, either.

He has included the conflicting requirement that it be fast and low
powered. All of these methods require more time and / or power. You
can use fractals to generate a picture of a mountain but a ROM picture
is a lot quicker and a lot lower powered way to go.

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Let me get this straight. If someone claims "the earth is flat" and
someone else calls that trolling and asks for evidence supporting
that claim, which poster is the troll according to your definition?

Which World? The Small or the Great World?

Nothing is really flat... (except the Monolith, of course ;-)).



Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[John Fields]

Which World? The Small or the Great World?

Nothing is really flat... (except the Monolith, of course ;-)).

 

[Andrew Reilly]

He has included the conflicting requirement that it be fast and low
powered. All of these methods require more time and / or power. You
can use fractals to generate a picture of a mountain but a ROM picture
is a lot quicker and a lot lower powered way to go.

Once upon a time, that was a given. It isn't necessarily the case, now
that FUs consume less power than pin drivers and memory controllers. Can
be faster, too, if latency to access the picture is an issue. I'm not
saying that all caching and storage will go away, by any means, but it's
worthwhile noticing that some of the trade-offs are changing.

For example, OpenVG (for 2D) and OpenGL ES seems to be becoming popular in
mobile phone GUI development because it's *cheaper*, both in terms of
storage space and power consumption to render on the spot, rather than
carry around pre-rendered bitmaps.

Cheers,

 

[Radium]

Once upon a time, that was a given. It isn't necessarily the case, now
that FUs consume less power than pin drivers and memory controllers.

What are "FUs"?

 

[Rich Grise]

Which World? The Small or the Great World?

Nothing is really flat... (except the Monolith, of course ;-)).

Have you ever noticed that, except for light beams, there are no straight
lines in Nature?

Cheers!
Rich

 

[MooseFET]

On May 13, 7:57 pm, Andrew Reilly <[email protected] [....]
He has included the conflicting requirement that it be fast and low
powered. All of these methods require more time and / or power. You
can use fractals to generate a picture of a mountain but a ROM picture
is a lot quicker and a lot lower powered way to go.

Once upon a time, that was a given. It isn't necessarily the case, now
that FUs consume less power than pin drivers and memory controllers. Can
be faster, too, if latency to access the picture is an issue. I'm not
saying that all caching and storage will go away, by any means, but it's
worthwhile noticing that some of the trade-offs are changing.

It is still true enouugh today to be a good assumption. Remember that
Radium is also ruling out the methods by which the software can be
stored. He isn't just against the images being stored he has also
stated that he wants to hold the amount of ROM to the mathematical
minimum. This would mean that a lot of the methods used to render
things in real time would go a foul of his requirements.

 

[Radium]

It is still true enouugh today to be a good assumption. Remember that
Radium is also ruling out the methods by which the software can be
stored. He isn't just against the images being stored he has also
stated that he wants to hold the amount of ROM to the mathematical
minimum. This would mean that a lot of the methods used to render
things in real time would go a foul of his requirements.

Well, as for digital images, I don't mind storing them as long they
are fully uncompressed and have enough pixelXpixel of resolution so
that I don't notice any "squares" that result from inadequate image
resolution.

 

[Bob Myers]

What are "FUs"?

An essential component of a FUBAR.

Bob M.

 

[Bob Myers]

Well, as for digital images, I don't mind storing them as long they
are fully uncompressed and have enough pixelXpixel of resolution so
that I don't notice any "squares" that result from inadequate image
resolution.

Squares have nothing to do with image resolution; they
have to do with improper reconstruction filtering being
imposed by the display. Pixels, in the sense of those things
that make up images (as opposed to the physical elements
of a fixed-format display), are not little squares.

For that matter, something in the form of "X by Y pixels"
is NOT a statement of resolution.

Bob M.

 

[Don Bowey]

Have you ever noticed that, except for light beams, there are no straight
lines in Nature?

Some light beams aren't straight either. It's all relative.

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Have you ever noticed that, except for light beams, there are no
straight lines in Nature?

Cheers!
Rich

Hi Rich!


Even Light is attractable to the force of Gravity . It is very
straight, though.... (more an effect, not a cause, IMHO. As humans
do..., themself they aren't straight, but its Works...)



Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Marra]

A PC that started up in about 1 second would be good.
Same for powering down.

www.ckp-railways.talktalk.net/pcbcad21.htm

 

[Bob Myers]

A PC that started up in about 1 second would be good.
Same for powering down.

You can power down ANY PC in well under a second.

It just might not appreciate your having done that, the next time
you fire it up....;-)

Bob M.

 

[John Fields]

A PC that started up in about 1 second would be good.
Same for powering down.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

A PC that started up in about 1 second would be good.
Same for powering down.

www.ckp-railways.talktalk.net/pcbcad21.htm

That was already made. They called it a Commodore 64.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Engineer]

Let me get this straight. If someone claims "the earth is flat" and someone else
calls that trolling and asks for evidence supporting that claim, which poster is the
troll according to your definition?

I didn't call anyone a troll. I called you a flamer -- because you injected
a personal attack into a technical discussion.

You can attempt to equate "wrong" with "trolling" if you wish, but you will
find yourself surrounded by "trolls" and will often be one yourself.

Just so there can be no confusion, calling Alpha micro coded is like saying the
earth is flat. Several people provided quotes from Alpha manuals that clearly
show that one of the key goals of Alpha was to not use micro code.

It doesn't matter whether you are right on the technical issue. You lose the
argument because you were the first one to resort to personal attacks.

 

[Winfield]

Sounds a great idea, but to clarify, I guess the instruction
stream, which of course wouldn't originate from parallel
programming techniques, languages, or compilers, just utilises
simple hardware serial to parallel converters to dish out
intructions to all the cpu's, radially ?.

Amazing that no one has thought of this before...

Chris

Greenfield Designs Ltd
Electronic and Embedded System Design
Oxford, England
(44) 1865 750 681

They haven't, because it's wrong.

For cmos, P = f C V^2, which tells us that for N
processors running at f' = f/N the power will be
P = N f' C V^2 = N f/N C V^2 = f C V^2, which is
no improvement at all, even if N = 1 billion.