On Sunday 17 July 2011 17:51:04 erik quanstrom wrote: > the "real hardware" depends on the cisc layer. a significant amount of > x86 performance depends on the fact that x86 isa code is very dense and is > used across much slower links than exist within a core.
((at the risk of sounding very silly)) there was that Transmeta Efficeon, which matched clock-for-clock performance of Pentium 3, and watt-for-watt was way, way ahead. it's core was 256bit VLIW (no idea if RISCy), and Transmeta's firmware translated x86 code dynamically into native format. if it was launched those days when multicore is a-OK, it'd shine; but back when desktops were singlecore and servers few-core-is, it fell flat because of singlecore performance :-( -- dexen deVries > (...) I never use more than 800Mb of RAM. I am running Linux, > a browser and a terminal. rjbond3rd in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2692529
