From: jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) Subject: Re: Intel, the Pentium and Linux Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 19:43:36 GMT
Nan Zou (nan@matt.ksu.ksu.edu) wrote:
:
: Now I don't think the Pentium numbers look half bad, even when stacked
: up against the Alpha. But is it as extensible as the Alpha?
: Performance/MHz doesn't really apply in this case, the Alpha was
: designed with the objective of being the fastest processor using the
: most advanced technology, in the process they have to make certain
: trade-offs, the Pentium, HP-PA and R4000 might have it beat when it
: comes to performance/mhz, then again, Pentium, HP-PA, and MIPS don't
: have any chips running at 200 MHz and easily raised to 400 MHz. How
: easily can the Pentium's clock speed be raised?
:
That I don't know, but it's interesting how things have changed. In the
old days, my 286 would have to be pumped up to about 200MHz to keep up with
my 12MHz R3000 (Personal IRIS). Not that I ever tried it, of course :-)
But it used to take a CISC CPU so many cycles to execute an instruction
that it would need a much faster clock than a RISC in order to offer similar
performance. Now the tables have turned; it takes a 150MHz RISC Alpha to
beat a 60Mhz CISC Pentium.
: -- Nan