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#11
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ISA does not matter
HT-Lab wrote:
Not sure if relevant in this discussion but the ISA makes a huge difference to the code density (discussed in comp.arch.embedded) If you define "huge difference" as 2X then you're right. For embedded stuff this can easily be the difference between making it all fit or not, but it isn't really a _big_ worry for 32-bit platforms. Terje (who used to spend weeks getting DOS TSRs as small as possible.) -- - Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching" |
#12
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ISA does not matter
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#13
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ISA does not matter
On 24.8.2010 8:32, Brett Davis wrote:
The car you drive probably has close to a dozen PowerPC chips in it. MOT is a $20 billion a year electronics company, and most of those chips have PowerPC hidden in them. The semiconductor business of MOT was transferred to Freescale Semiconductor in 2004, which is a 3.5B company. PowerPC dominates because of AltiVec and the bitfield extract and other cool useful instructions that give good performance and good inner loop code density. I would say PowerPC is big in the embedded market due to the good spectrum of different chips that have rich set of peripherials. The processor itself is not that critical, all the support logic around is (memory controllers,i2c, ethernet, accelerators, flash, usb etc.). This is where Intel for example has problems with their Atom. --Kim |
#14
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ISA does not matter
On Aug 24, 1:32*am, Brett Davis wrote:
Programmers LIKE PowerPC, whereas MIPS and ARM are tolerated. (This is a major reason PowerPC dominates, pity the fool manager that picks MIPS and cant find good programmers to work for him.) Always good to have insightful advice about programming from a programmer in a hardware forum. The original context, which you destroyed by your cross-post, has been completely lost. Have you heard of comp.arch.embedded? Robert. |
#15
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ISA does not matter
In article ,
Kim Enkovaara wrote: On 24.8.2010 8:32, Brett Davis wrote: PowerPC dominates because of AltiVec and the bitfield extract and other cool useful instructions that give good performance and good inner loop code density. I would say PowerPC is big in the embedded market due to the good spectrum of different chips that have rich set of peripherials. The processor itself is not that critical, all the support logic around is (memory controllers,i2c, ethernet, accelerators, flash, usb etc.). This is where Intel for example has problems with their Atom. Perhaps. It's not my area. What I do know is that it was taken up by the embedded market long before Aptivec was invented, so the claim that it was taken up because of Aptivec is more than a little erroneous. Regards, Nick Maclaren. |
#16
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ISA does not matter
On Aug 24, 6:22*am, Paul Gotch wrote:
There are over 1 billion ARM cores across all architecture profiles shipped per quarter. I suspect that if you include mobile devices in the "embedded" world, Power and/or PowerPC don't even make the top 10 core-units. Mitch |
#17
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ISA does not matter
"MitchAlsup" wrote in message
... On Aug 24, 6:22 am, Paul Gotch wrote: There are over 1 billion ARM cores across all architecture profiles shipped per quarter. I suspect that if you include mobile devices in the "embedded" world, Power and/or PowerPC don't even make the top 10 core-units. Well, if mobile devices doesn't include cars! Certainly I associate PowrPC with automotive. I don't think PowerPC has anything equivalent to low-end ARM cores such as Cortex-M0, -M3 or ARM7. By core count the world is mostly full of 8051 variants almost more numerous than sand. Peter |
#18
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ISA does not matter
Brett Davis wrote:
If PowerPC was just another RISC chip this could not have happened. Being late to the market with a me-too product would not have worked. PowerPC dominates because of AltiVec and the bitfield extract and other cool useful instructions that give good performance and good inner loop code density. Programmers LIKE PowerPC, whereas MIPS and ARM are tolerated. (This is a major reason PowerPC dominates, pity the fool manager that picks MIPS and cant find good programmers to work for him.) ISA does matter, just not the way you think it does. Brett - Actually working on ARM code right now. My general observation of talking to PowerPC developers has been: 1. IBM couldn't have made a more impenetrable assembly language. Seriously guys, never heard of register prefixes? Apple's variation was so much nicer. 2. Why are the bits numbered back to front? Way to confuse the hell out of people. On the other hand, ARM development has been a rather pleasant experience; to each his own - Owen (Not to say that any ISA is perfect; god knows ARM has its foibles, just like any other. They're just not as pervasive.) |
#19
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ISA does not matter
In article
, Robert Myers wrote: On Aug 24, 1:32*am, Brett Davis wrote: Programmers LIKE PowerPC, whereas MIPS and ARM are tolerated. (This is a major reason PowerPC dominates, pity the fool manager that picks MIPS and cant find good programmers to work for him.) Always good to have insightful advice about programming from a programmer in a hardware forum. The original context, which you destroyed by your cross-post, has been completely lost. Have you heard of comp.arch.embedded? Robert. I would have rephrased things in comp.arch.embedded as the old dogs there would not have appreciated me telling them what CPUs they use/like. And they program some really weird stuff. Brett |
#20
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ISA does not matter
In article ,
Kim Enkovaara wrote: On 24.8.2010 8:32, Brett Davis wrote: The car you drive probably has close to a dozen PowerPC chips in it. MOT is a $20 billion a year electronics company, and most of those chips have PowerPC hidden in them. The semiconductor business of MOT was transferred to Freescale Semiconductor in 2004, which is a 3.5B company. MOT still owns license free copies of all those PowerPC cores, and uses those cores in most of their products, regardless of who fabs the chips. So the total is (20B + 3.5B) / percent CPU. Even if you round down to 3 billion, second place ARM is .6 billion, or .2 billion before Apple bestowed some king maker grace on ARM. PowerPC dominates because of AltiVec and the bitfield extract and other cool useful instructions that give good performance and good inner loop code density. I would say PowerPC is big in the embedded market due to the good spectrum of different chips that have rich set of peripherials. The processor itself is not that critical, all the support logic around is (memory controllers,i2c, ethernet, accelerators, flash, usb etc.). This is where Intel for example has problems with their Atom. --Kim |
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