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ISA does not matter



 
 
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  #11  
Old August 23rd 10, 11:15 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch
Terje Mathisen[_3_]
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Posts: 23
Default 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  
Old August 24th 10, 06:32 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch
Brett Davis
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Posts: 22
Default ISA does not matter

In article , wrote:

In article ,
Brett Davis wrote:

Ultimately this one innovation alone was not enough for PowerPC to
overcome all the disadvantages of competing against Intel, but it
did level the playing field for a decade.

Not really. Witness how many other companies showed an interest;
it wasn't even up to the level of SPARC or MIPS, though I accept
that there were other reasons than performance that dominated.


I call "bull****" on you.
SPARC and MIPS do not have the spare opcode space to implement the
AltiVec permute instructions, and then there is the little issue of
Apple owning the patents.


I was referring to the number of other companies that were interested
in licensing PowerPC, let alone PowerPC+Altivec. Far more pursued
SPARC and MIPS.


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.
IBM sells the PowerPC chips in your Tivo/DVR and all three consoles.
(Playstation3, XBox360, and Wii.)

ARMH is a far distant second in sales at ~$600 million a year.
(Pre-iPhone I remember them being a ~$200 million a year company...)

MIPS has yearly sales of $70 million. Used to be twice that?
(Hard to fund a design teem and stay relevant/solvent at that size...)

SPARC as snot for sales outside of SUN/JAVA and Fujitsu.

AltiVec has clearly mattered in making PowerPC the dominate RISC chip.
MIPS used to be significant, the Playstation1 and 2 were MIPS based.

PowerPC has ~90% market share in the 32bit market, and ~99% of the
64bit embedded market. (Dollar share, not unit share.)
Up from zero a decade ago.

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.
  #13  
Old August 24th 10, 06:50 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch
Kim Enkovaara
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Posts: 26
Default 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  
Old August 24th 10, 07:58 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch
Robert Myers
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Posts: 606
Default 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  
Old August 24th 10, 08:55 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch
[email protected]
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Posts: 17
Default 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  
Old August 24th 10, 05:08 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch
MitchAlsup
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Posts: 38
Default 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  
Old August 24th 10, 05:19 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch
Peter Dickerson[_3_]
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Posts: 2
Default 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  
Old August 25th 10, 01:01 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch
Owen Shepherd
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Posts: 2
Default 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  
Old August 25th 10, 06:45 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch
Brett Davis
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 22
Default 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  
Old August 26th 10, 06:02 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch
Brett Davis
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Posts: 22
Default 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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