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Old February 24th 14, 10:35 PM posted to comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,alt.windows7.general
Jason[_13_]
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Posts: 10
Default How many x86 instructions?

On Mon, 24 Feb 2014 14:09:02 -0500 " wrote
in article

On Mon, 24 Feb 2014 13:38:40 -0500, Jason
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Feb 2014 13:02:02 -0500 " wrote
in article

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 23:21:52 -0500, Jason
wrote:

On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 14:23:01 +0000 (UTC) "Robert Redelmeier"

Now, divide that expenditure by the number manufactured. I worked in
high-end microprocessor design for seven or eight years. Transistors
are indeed treated as free, and getting cheaper every year. If you
look at how programmers write, they think they're free, too. ;-)


Ok, transistors are indeed free in that regard. But as we've learned
there are limits to absolute performance that can be had even with an
unlimited transistor budget - hence multi-core machines. Programmers
would be very happy if we could have figured out how to continuously
boost uniprcessor performance but it cannot happen, at least with
silicon. Taking advantage of parallel processor, for most tasks, is very
hard.